Walter Smith admits Rangers cannot afford to pay big transfer fees in this summer's market.

The Rangers manager said: "People keep talking about the budget that we've got but I don't think anybody has a budget that is wide open and that they can spend whatever they want.

"Everybody has to work within a certain criteria; the biggest problem with Rangers' budget this season is that we need quite a number of players to boost not only our first team as such but our first-team squad.

"So we have two fronts to buy in players and therefore we need our budget to do that."

On the Simon Brown deal, Smith added: "Celtic offered more money and more wages, but they only need maybe one or two players to be added to their squad.

"We couldn't afford to put that money all into one player."

"I think that this is something at Rangers now everybody has to realise; we have to be careful with what we have spend and we're not the only club in the world to have to operate like that."

By bringing Alan Gow, Kirk Broadfoot and Jean-Claude Darcheville to Ibrox on free transfers, Rangers have strengthened but retained most of their spending kitty.