Time To Close The Doors - Temporarily

I FEAR the time has finally come for somebody within Hampden to call in Duff & Phelps and tell them - hand your ball back, you're not playing any more. While I admit I am largely working from a state of true ignorance and like everyone else reacting to leaks, statements and conjecture, I feel the time has come to close-down Rangers.

Here is a once proud club, reduced to impotency, with the supposed owner - Craig Whyte - deemed unfit to own it and with another potential owner - Charles Green - who like the previous owner - David Murray - is intent on purchasing the club using other people's money.

We don't know if Rangers FC owns its own ground, or if Whyte has transferred ownership of Ibrox to some other company based in the Cayman Islands or some other tax bolt hole.

We don't know if the club's better players will be playing there next season. We don't know if the money is in place to get the club through the close season. Sure, Duff & Phelps say the cash is there - does anyone out there still beleve a word that company's representatives come out with.

Indeed, given the allegations from the recent Rangers documentary on BBC Scotland and the interest being shown by the Insolvency Practitioners Association (IPA), will Duff & Phelps be able to see out the administration?

The answer lies in the hands of the SFA. After D&P's monumental own goal in going to the Court of Session to overturn the SFA's transfer ban on Rangers, Lord Glennie passed the ball back to is colleague, Lord Carloway and the SFA's Appeals Tribunal, the accompanying shout was apparently: "Hammer the bastards": Rangers are now looking at one of three options: one season's band from the Scottish Cup, suspension of SFA membership for a period or expulsion from the game.

Given Spartans were chucked out of the Scottish Cup for omitting a single signature, Rangers commiting a crime which the Appeals Tribunal said: "Was in their opinion second only to match-fixing in its severity", I think we can take it, option one is a non-starter.

No, I reckon Rangers will be suspended from playing for at least one season.

In theory, this will allow things to be sorted-out. The BTC (big tax case) result can come through, the IPA can - if they wish - get involved in Duff & Phelps and either clear them, or clear them out. I accept it will perhaps mean a longer wait for resolution, but, perhaps in the end, the time Rangers spend in suspension might be used to sort out a really tangled mess.

I would like to see, protocols put in place whereby a fans' buy-out could be achieved, with some long-term strategy for debt clearance and with, at the end, a new and better Rangers emerging.

We might loath them at times, but, in all honesty - while we will not miss a minority, can Scottish football really do without these thousands of Rangers fans and the money they put into the game?