Rangers are sharpening the creases that could see them fold quicker than any football supporter throughout the world would have imagined possible on a realistic scale.
On the playing field side of events the manager Ally McCoist is seeing positives. Former managers of the club aren't. Gallingly it was Souness who steered Rangers's success domestically in the Scottish league but allowed the club to arrive to the point of this week's ever-daily detritus.
Normally with the case of football clubs entering into the misery of administration the process has been based on a short-term period of terrible takeovers and financial shortsightedness. However, this is Scottish football, and in particular the stakes with the Murray Revolution were high.
Unsurprisingly David Murray released a press statement today to fudge the gap between the merry hell Craig Whyte foisted upon the Rangers support yesterday and what Murray himself bore him last year when he gave up the club for one pound. Murray and Souness were, when they began this misadventure in April 1986, two thieves thick in their intent to steal a charge to domestic and European dominance. Fair play to the two: they did bring in star names (having on their books England internationals who played a large part in the Italia 90 campaign); and obviously rankled Celtic psychologically for five years by signing Maurice Johnston from under their noses.
Souness left in 1991 but he obviously set a standard that emboldened later managers of Walter Smith and Dick Advocaat to slap into submission big signings using Murray's dubious cheque book. Rangers were rampant. No one in the Scottish league could touch them as they didn't live up to the myth coming out of Ibrox Park. During this time sides like Airdrie and Gretna went under. The media was more distracted by the idea of Gascoigne knocking them in for fun on the park and knocking out his wife off it. They saw how sleek the skills of Brian Laudrup would crank up the numbers. Andy Gray, a former Rangers man himself, would be the first to have made a commentary.
In terms of statistics Rangers equaled and very nearly bettered the record of league titles in a row. To date they've amassed 54 league flags under their belts. In 2008 they reached the final of the Uefa Cup but lost. If they'd won then they would have added another star to their club badge.
With success a reputation of greatness joins hands. It emotes itself so much that the society of supporters surrounding the club gates start to feel it. It's heartfelt in work relationships, in how a supporter conducts themselves abroad, how a supporter sees someone across the street from you, what a supporters does in a household season after season. Football has this intrinsic knack of ruining or making your life the way it is. But, for twenty three years Rangers Football Club have spun a woeful, devious, cowardly and arrogant lie to the greater footballing public. And now is the time they've let everyone down.
The supporters who ferry themselves from the sectarian corners of Ulster every Rangers home game must now have serious doubts about a different religion they hold dear: the sovereign Queen of England. Her tax collectors have dealt this facade a crippling blow.
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