Rangers in crisis: St Mirren become seventh club to oppose newco into SPL for 'sporting integrity' reasons I made it perfectly clear that our directors' view was that our club would not be voting for a Newco entry to the SPL, directly to the officials of Rangers Newco. This meeting was held in confidential circumstances to allow both parties to enable the other to see their respective positions. A very positive meeting was held. However, the position of St Mirren has not changed and our stance of sporting integrity was maintained against the very pressing commercial arguments. He added: "Regrettably, the commercial, and hence financial, impact is still not clear to the club. We are very hopeful that this aspect will become clearer in the next few days. This will play a major part in the decision-making for the board of directors as to the way forward for the club in the short term. We are obviously hoping that our commercial and television partners stay with the league through this very difficult period. It has been impossible for the clubs to downsize as quickly as we would like due to the contractual obligations of the club. These are considerable and must be maintained to ensure the club does not slip into the fate of others. It is possible that major cutbacks may have to be made within the company. This may well involve people in the club losing their employment - not a good situation - so please accept that the club will be unlikely to be signing any new players until this situation is clear. Naturally, we hope that if our partners do not invoke exit clauses in their contracts, we would not have to go down this route. The decision on those matters is outwith the control of the club. Let us hope that the possible scenarios are not as severe as they could possibly be and that we show those partners our support to convince them to support Scottish football. On the issue of league reconstruction, Gilmour said: "As events unfold this may be an opportunity for real change in Scottish Football. St Mirren shall throw their weight totally behind a 16-team league structured in a similar way to the Belgium system, with a large number of crossover games at the end of the season to determine relegation, European places and champions. Saints have called a shareholders meeting for Monday evening to discuss the financial implications of the Rangers crisis. Maurice Edu has hinted he will seek a way out of the Rangers turmoil as he wants to test himself at the highest level. The United States midfielder was not among the 13 players who turned up for the start of pre-season training yesterday but he had been given extra time off due to his international commitments. Bursaspor have been linked with a move for the player, who can leave under the exit clause negotiated when he accepted a wage cut in February, even if he does not object to the transfer of his contract to Sevco. Edu told foxsoccer.com: "I'm no different than anyone else. You want to go as far as you can in this game. You want to see how far you can go. It's a short career, you know? You want to try and play at the highest levels possible and test yourself against some of the best players. Those are things I definitely have ambitions to do and goals I have set for myself. Youngster Chris Hegarty has become the first player to sign for newco Rangers. The defender, 19, has committed himself to the new regime by putting pen to paper on a 12-month deal. The Northern Ireland under-21 captain was a free agent after his previous contract with Rangers expired this summer but he will now remain at Ibrox. Charles Green, meanwhile, has urged fans to back his consortium instead of resorting to what he described as attempts to undermine their rescue plans for the club. A crowd of around 1,500 staged a protest against the new regime outside Ibrox on Wednesday night, led by former defender John Brown. Brown, who has urged Light Blues supporters not to renew season-tickets, plans to lead a fans' buyout of the Sevco group, who purchased the business and assets of Rangers for £5.5million earlier this month. Green told BBC Scotland: "It's not right that a proportion of Rangers fans continue to attack my consortium and try to undermine our rescue plans. It's not right that every two weeks a Mel Gibson appears, delivers a Braveheart statement, then doesn't deliver anything. Meanwhile, Rangers have clarified Direct Debit arrangements for season-ticket holders opting against renewal, telling fans: "All season tickets which were paid by Direct Debit last year were automatically lodged again as they are held in one batch. This does not take payment and merely sets up the instruction for the full batch. As season holders have advised us that they wish to cancel their Direct Debit, their seat is cancelled in our ticketing system and, when the payment instruction runs to take payment, all those who have advised the club of their wish to cancel will be excluded from the payment run. Whilst we appreciate that this is far from an ideal situation, we hope that all our season-ticket holders recognise that the current transition period is challenging operationally and would ask for your continued patience.