RICHIE Barker hopes to unveil two new signings by the end of the week despite being hampered by the Rangers buy-out rumours.

The Bury manager was forced to put his transfer dealings on hold for two days after the story linking Rangers owner Charles Green with a takeover bid for Shakers broke in the national newspapers.

But Barker has since held meetings with two players and expects a response to his offers by tomorrow.

“The talks are quite far down the line so hopefully, by the end of this week, we may have some yes or no answers,” said the Shakers boss.

“We’ve been very busy, but I have to admit that, for about 48 hours, I stopped making calls because I knew the answers I would probably get back from agents would be ‘listen mate, we will speak with you, but he doesn’t really want to move to Glasgow’.

“I decided to stop doing anything until it had died down and people had worked out that the story wasn’t going to be a goer.

“It’s not been very stable here so it’s fair to say that the story didn’t help (our dealings with players), it certainly didn’t help.”

Reports in a national newspaper said the Old Firm outfit were looking into the possibility of taking up Bury’s fixtures in League One and moving home games to Ibrox.

The Bury directors moved quickly to deny any talks with Rangers owner Green had ever taken place, a claim that was later confirmed by Rangers.

Barker for one is happy that the story is now “yesterday’s news”.

“Bury as a football club deserves to be in Bury, it deserves to be in League One and the people of Bury deserve to be able to turn up and watch their local football team play in Gigg Lane, where they’ve been for more than 100 years.

“I thought it was unfortunate and I am pleased that common sense has prevailed.”

The Bury boss now hopes that he can get back to business in what he admits has been a difficult close season.

“We have lost out on one player we have spoken to this week who I think is going to sign for somebody else in our division after being made a better financial offer - that’s not just once or twice this season, it’s happened a few times.”