Glenn Gibbons: Administration is not a get-out clause at Ibrox

What is surely incontestable, however, is that the Parkhead club’s reluctance is an exposure of the popular fallacy that, for people or organisations on their uppers, entering administration or declaring bankruptcy represents some kind of get-out.

For those Rangers supporters who persist in clinging to the conviction that their invalided club will emerge from its present incapacity debt-free and stronger than ever, this is an early, and possibly sobering, insight into an unnerving truth: it is that, in common with certain offences, the penalties to be paid can last enough years to make a lifetime.

For confirmation, ask a convicted drunk driver about the cost of motor insurance premiums, or someone with even a relatively minor criminal record about the chances of taking a holiday in the United States.

The string of court cases, both actual and avoided, involving Rangers’ non-payment of legitimate debts that have been a feature of Craig Whyte’s ownership since last May would have been enough in itself to have made doing business with his club unappealing to traders. Existing and potential dealers would not have failed to notice that the sums involved in some of the court actions were small enough to be an acute embarrassment.

The subsequent enforced descent into administration under the burden of mounting liabilities with HMRC, followed by the news that even fellow members of the Scottish Premier League (most notably the penurious Dunfermline Athletic) are overdue much-needed revenue, would undoubtedly render Rangers’ credit rating risible.

Celtic’s insistence on avoiding risk in the matter of doing business with their Old Firm “partners” has been turned into the highest-profile example of the difficulties Rangers will encounter for an indefinite period. But the news of the financial pledges which the Ibrox administrators felt moved to make to Dundee United is, in essence, confirmation of the wider implications.

United, already overdue payment from Rangers for last month’s Scottish Cup tie at Ibrox, have been assured that most of the ticket money the latter will have taken for the clubs’ next confrontation, the league match at Tannadice on 17 March, will be paid before the event and that the balance will be cleared from the administrators’ own bank account within 72 hours of the completion of the game. It is expected, too, that similar promises will be made to Motherwell for the Fir Park collision on 31 March.

If their fellows in the SPL brotherhood require such security in advance of executing joint ventures as routine as football matches, you may be sure that Rangers’ other contractors, from the window cleaner to the pie man, will have their hands out for settlement before any work is done or any supplies delivered.

As for their core business, the acquisition of quality footballers with a view to achieving success on the field of play, Rangers, like the traveller with a pre-existing medical condition taking out travel insurance, will be hit with a punitive level of “loading” not imposed on those with a history of good health. This will almost certainly take the form of not only being charged more than others, but made to pay a higher percentage of the fee (if not all of it) up front.

Buying high-class players, of course, will seem to Ally McCoist at the moment about as likely as resuming his own playing career. The 49-year-old Rangers manager may be the oldest rookie in the history of the job, but it is also extremely unlikely that any first-year incumbent who has gone before will have experienced the range of ups and downs – the latter emphatically more plentiful – than has been his inescapable fate during the past seven months.

In fact, there has been only one high, the period his team spent at the summit of the Premier League until they were dislodged by Celtic on 28 December, a consequence of Neil Lennon’s team’s 1-0 victory in the Old Firm match at Parkhead.

Rangers had been at the top for the four months since late August, but, during that time, McCoist himself would almost certainly have been cognisant of an underlying, disquieting truth about his squad that seemed much less apparent to the average professional observer. Indeed, many of Rangers’ performances during those weeks gave rise to one of the most hackneyed and moronic maxims in football reporting.

It is the notion that a manager “will not give a toss” about how his team performed, as long as they secured the desired result. This may apply to any side involved in a relegation war, but to a team aspiring to honours, it is relevant on only one occasion: that is, the day the required outcome wins the trophy.

And yet, as Rangers lurched from one unconvincing performance to the next – sometimes gaining fortunate and undeserved rewards – the chronicles were full of assurances that McCoist would not care how they won, but only that they won. The man himself would know better.

Every manager in the world acknowledges that it is nonsense to suggest that “it’s the sign of a good team when they can play badly and still win”. Repetitive mediocrity has never been the mark of a good team, and consistent sluggishness leads inevitably to a fall. When, in November, Rangers were 15 points ahead of their most serious challengers, it was Celtic’s shame that they should be so far off such moderate rivals. For anyone paying proper attention – and McCoist would be one – the subsequent turnaround will not have been entirely surprising.