Beale cranks up the pressure as he demands five new signings from under fire Wilson

Micky Beale has told Ross Wilson that he needs to sign at least five first team starters for next season’s challenge to Celtic.

In January Todd Cantwell and Nicolas Raskin were brought in for combined fees of around £2m with two more high earners added to the wage bill.

It looks like the long delayed rebuild will be forced on the club this summer with seven first team players out of contract plus John Lundstram and Borna Barisic entering the final year of their deals.

Wilson had a nightmare last summer when he signed Tom Lawrence, John Souttar, Rabbi Matondo and Ridvan Yilmaz with fans making their feelings clear at recent matches with banner protests against the ‘Director of Failure’.

Across the city Ange Postecoglou has had a near flawless run in the transfer market with that comparison now coming down on Wilson and Beale.

With no match to preview this weekend Beale had to hear his own voice lecturing others about his brilliant ideas and plans with The Sun reporting the Ibrox boss saying:

I’ve identified some really good players for the club and the club is away working on that. Good players don’t always cost lots. They just have to fit the way you want to play but I’m confident this summer gives us an opportunity to do two things.

We want to have a tighter group, and then we want to recruit new faces and energy into it. Look at Todd Cantwell and Nico Raskin, they didn’t cost huge amounts.

Certainly, with the salaries we have going out at the end of contracts, we have finance to bring in. There are good players out there available on loan as well. Malik Tillman has been one of the better players in the league.

That helps, but my staff are extensive in terms of our knowledge of players and those coming through the different systems.

Our scouting department is really good as well. It’s about identifying the right names and making sure they’re a good fit.

So we’ll build a stronger squad than this season — it’s just how quickly we get that team up and running. In terms of the number of signings, there is no set number on it but you could say now there will comfortably be five new faces.

If we sell, we’d replace like-for-like in terms of positions. So it could be any number.

Last summer Antonio Colak was the only new signing to join Giovanni van Bronckhorst for day one of pre-season training.

Ryan Kent, Alfredo Morelos, Ryan Jack, Allan McGregor, Scott Arfield, Filip Helander and Steve Davis are out of contract at the end of this season. Souttar, Lawrence, Yilmaz and Matondo are on long term contracts.

Beale has already described the £5m deal to sign Malik Tillman from Bayern Munich as a no-brainer- that can be interpreted in two ways.