Rangers administration: ‘I was there with the De Boers, Amoruso, Ferguson, Arteta, Averladze, Mols, Caniggia – a team full of superstars. Rangers were paying astronomical wages’

Even those on the inside couldn’t foretell the mess that Rangers would get themselves into as the cost of chasing success eventually caught up with them.

Steven Thompson’s three years at the club were spent winning trophies and sharing the dressing room with household names. Just six years later and the club now faces the prospect of a barren season and the likelihood that any of the remaining stars will be sold off in a bid to solve the club’s crippling financial conundrums.

Signed by Alex McLeish in early 2003, Thompson was sold to Cardiff City in January 2006 but while he is now on the outside looking in, he says even when he was part of it all there was no guessing the turmoil that would come chapping at the doors of Ibrox.

“It’s just extremely sad. It’s shocking in a way because you couldn’t imagine it going back ten years, even a decade and a half ago when Rangers were paying out these astronomical wages. Nobody really complained about it then, everybody was just riding the rollercoaster.

“But what is happening now is terrible and you have to feel sorry for everybody at the club, not just the players but, of course, every other member of staff at Ibrox and Murray Park because no one there knows what their future will be. It’s extremely sad and I just hope it gets sorted out soon but unfortunately I don’t think that’s likely. I think it’s going to be a long process.”

When he was at the club, the squad register was top heavy with top earners and top quality. Their legacy now looks to have been more than trophies. “I was there with the De Boers and [Lorenzo] Amoruso, [Barry] Ferguson, [Craig] Moore, [Mikel] Arteta, [Shota] Averladze, [Michael] Mols, [Claudia] Caniggia; it was a team full of superstars and its incredible when you look at the team now and then go back less than a decade. But that’s just the way the economy is now and every club in Scotland and some of the smaller clubs down south, everybody has had to tighten the reins.”

On top of Rangers crisis, the SPL have also seen Hearts fail to pay players on time, while Dunfermline have blamed the failure of Rangers to stump up cash owed on their inability to furnish their squad with full payment this month.

It leaves Thompson glad that he is coming towards the last few years of his playing days rather than just embarking on a professional career. “Jim Goodwin and I were joking about that when he heard about Dunfermline. Dunfermline are now the latest club unable to pay the players their full wages and it’s not a great time. There are clubs in England struggling too.

“We were telling some of the younger players that we are glad we will be out of it soon because they just don’t know what the future’s going to be like. We never had that kind of financial worry and I consider myself fortunate that I’m not just starting out at this time. But hopefully it all gets resolved.”