Hugh Keevins: Fifty shades of grey areas for Celtic and Rangers

There was so much contained within the full table of information laid out by Rangers' chairman Dave King in his weekend statement concerning Mark Warburton's departure that it was inevitable not every crumb could be digested in a single helping.

Something which gave residual food for thought, therefore, was the revelation that £18m has already been spent on reconstructing Rangers on and off the park, leaving £12m in the kitty set aside for creating better days.

King now concedes this may not be enough to carry out the job successfully.

He said, "It's my present, personal view that we will, in all likelihood, invest more than £30m before we are where we want to be, but this will be re-visited when we have a new, permanent management team in place."

This observation would seem to throw up a number of issues needing to be addressed, such as where will this extra investment come from and why, if there is £12m in the kitty, are Rangers still using loans in order to carry out their business until the end of the season?

It has always been said by the club, and justifiably so, that there will never be any return to the reckless spending which took Rangers into the calamitous place from which they are trying to return.

So how will they respond to the question of where they find the means to compete with Celtic while their rivals continue to make money hand over fist?

King's statement said Rangers would practice "prudent, phased investment."

It could be a long, drawn out phase.

Celtic have spent in the region of £7m this season while acquiring Moussa Dembele, Scott Sinclair, Eboue Kouassie and Christian Gamboa, and Brendan Rodgers has publicly stated there is no ceiling on the sum of money he could spend on his next transfer purchase.

A five or six million pound player would be no problem to the club, according to the manager.

All of which presents a daunting task for Warburton's successor, whoever that may be.

At least Alex Mcleish, the bookies favourite and someone who has already declared his interest in returning to Ibrox, would be familiar with the terrain.

He came into Ibrox as manager in 2001 when Rangers were downsizing in the aftermath of Dick Advocaat's high spending years in charge and had to take on Martin O'Neill at Celtic Park.

Five major trophies in a row for McLeish thereafter proved he could handle all aspects of being Rangers manager.

Could history repeat itself sixteen years later?

On the evidence of the weekend's Scottish Cup ties, with Celtic blowing Inverness Caley Thistle off the park in a six goal romp and Rangers getting by narrowly against Championship side Morton, the re-writing of history will be a mammoth task.

Old Firm managers don't normally promise the earth, but Rodgers came close to it with his pronouncement that he wanted to win this season's Premiership title by fifty points if he could.

Rodgers has reached the stage where he can wonder aloud about the possibility of a fifty point gap in the Premiership partly on the back of vastly improving the squad of players he inherited from Ronny Deila.

McLeish, or whoever leads the next management team at Rangers, will need to deal with an Ibrox squad which saw Warburton come into direct conflict with his board over the lack of quality to be found there.

We have King's word for it that Warburton did not welcome the directorial scrutiny of his work, which prompted the chairman to remark that no manager in the world can be free from boardroom analysis.

The next manager will have to lift a squad in which two of the outstanding players are in their late thirties, Kenny Miller and Clint Hill, assuming they are given contract extensions in the first place.

Two others, John Toral and Emerson Hyndman, will go back to their parent clubs in England unless deals can be done to hold on to them.

In other words, the next man in at Rangers will need to have an enormous capacity for work and a ready list of players who can be brought in to replace those who have been found wanting in the eyes of the clubs directorate.

And proper advancement will only be made if there is proper financial backing in place.

In the meantime, Rodgers' enthusiasm for the task of keeping Celtic in a pre-eminent position at a domestic level shows no sign of letting up while he has his own chapter in the club's history to write.

The irony is, if you built a side which was capable of winning the league they're in by fifty points then how long would it be before you hit your boredom threshold and looked for a fresh challenege?

That's a grey area. A fifty shades of grey area.

• superscoreboard
• Hugh Keevins