MOSCOW, March 24 (RIA Novosti) - Zenit St. Petersburg manager Dick Advocaat has said that he would like to see Glasgow Rangers' and Scotland captain Barry Ferguson in his side.

Advocaat will lose key midfielder and club captain Anatoliy Tymoshchuk to Bayern Munich in the summer, and the Zenit manager told the Daily Mail that Ferguson, 31, would be the ideal replacement.

"I am sure everyone in Scotland knows by now what I think of Barry Ferguson - he's still a top player," Advocaat said.

The Dutch trainer made Ferguson captain of Rangers during his spell managing the Scottish club from 1998-2001. Ferguson was also captain of the Rangers side that lost to Zenit in the 2008 UEFA Cup final.

"We are losing Tymoshchuk in a couple of months, when he signs for Bayern Munich. I've brought in Russian international Igor Semshov to try to plug the gap. But if it does not work out well for him and for us, then Barry would be one I would think about, definitely," Advocaat said.

Ferguson earns 25,000 pounds a week at Rangers ($37,000) and Zenit, controlled by state-run gas giants Gazprom, would be easily able to match that.

Scottish international Garry O'Connor is the only British footballer to have played professionally in Russia. The current Birmingham City forward signed for Lokomotiv Moscow from Hibernian in early 2006 and scored 7 goals in 33 appearances. Despite scoring the winning goal in the Russian Cup final in 2007, O'Connor never settled in Russia, citing the lack of Sky TV as one of a number of problems with adaptation.