The Rangers complete unknown from Advocaat era set to be Champions League boss after Salzburg manager storm

The name Alex Hauser probably won’t mean much to the majority of Rangers fans despite spending a couple of years on the books at Ibrox.

But they might hear his name a bit more after he was thrust into his first senior managerial position at Austrian side Red Bull Salzburg in dramatic fashion when the Bundesliga side sacked Matthias Jaissle due to the fact he wants a move to Al-Ahli in Saudi Arabia. Salzburg have turned to his assistant Hauser in the short term and he will take the reins for the league clash with Altach on Saturday evening.

The 39-year-old had a modest playing career but he moved to Scotland at a time when he was a highly rated defender and predicted to reach great heights but failed to live up to that early hype. Hauser was just 16-years-old and already a star of the Austrian Under-18 national team when Rangers beat off a number of top European clubs to sign him from FC Tirol, where he was out of contract.

Having had success with a similar type of signing in Rino Gattuso a few years earlier, the hope was he could go on to enjoy success. But it didn’t work out as planned. Dick Advocaat was in charge at Ibrox at the time and said of the signing at the time: "We have signed Alex Hauser, but that is more to do with the youth coaches rather than Bert van Lingen and myself.”

The signing came just a week after a much higher profile recruit for Rangers with Ronald de Boer coming through the front doors of Ibrox. However, while De Boer helped the Light Blues win silverware - Hauser left after a couple of years. He went on to play for a string of second tier Austrian sides before moving into youth coaching and became assistant at Red Bull Salzburg two years ago.