Malik Tillman has issued a strong response to potentially signing for Rangers on a permanent basis.
The Bayern Munich loanee has captured the hearts of the Ibrox faithful this season since joining on a loan deal in the summer. The youngster produced key goals in his first few games under then Rangers boss Gio Van Bronckhorst before becoming an integral part of the starting eleven under Michael Beale.
The Ibrox gaffer himself admitted he would love Tillman to stay on in Glasgow and with some reports claiming a fee of £5million which the Light Blues are said to have first dibs on, would be enough to secure the 20-year-old's services full-time. But the American admits he can envisage staying at Rangers but that also he could please his coaches back in Munich.
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He told Kicker : “I just want to play as much as possible. To me it’s relatively unimportant where that is. I feel comfortable here, in fact very comfortable. I bring my performances which I think Rangers are really happy with. But I could also imagine the same with the people at Bayern.“
Rangers trail Celtic by nine points in the Premiership title race but Tillman has refused to throw in the towel as he opened up on chasing down the league champions and his reasons for making the move to Ibrox in the first place. He continued: "We play them twice more. If we keep going like this, we have to win every game. Who knows, everyone can leave points behind.
"I followed them in the Europa League last year, for example, they made it to the final against Frankfurt . There was also the opportunity to play the Champions League here. And here we are the best team with Celtic.
"In addition, with the Scottish hardness I can bring another component into my game that I didn't know before."
On the main differences between Beale and Van Bronckhorst, he added: "Among other things, he allows more offensive football to be played. I would say that he and his assistants prepare us more for opponents. We have a better sense of how we go into a game."
Tillman was involved in a huge talking point in the Scottish Cup win over Partick Thistle that ended with Rangers allowing their Scottish Championship opponents a walk-through goal to make it 2-2.
The holders went on to win the game 3-2 and book a quarter-final date with Raith Rovers as the USA international gave his versions of how events unfolded in Govan. He said: "The thing was that I was fouled and treated and didn't realise that my team-mate Antonio Colak then played the ball wide. When the others then threw in, I thought it would go on as normal. And it didn't look to me like the defender wanted to hit the ball over to us either. So I took the ball from him and scored the goal.
"Then I realised that something was wrong. My team-mates explained it to me.
"We let them score the goal to make it 2-2 straight away, so that settled it for me. And we still won the game "fairly". I really didn't want to have anything to do with these players anymore, because when they all came running up to me, they didn't act in the right way as human beings. So what was said there."
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