King makes a fit and proper assessment of Rangers' situation

It doesn't strike me as even remotely funny that the members of Rangers' board of directors, plus their Chief Executive, felt it was in the best interests of their own personal safety to stay away from Sunday's Scottish Cup defeat from Raith Rovers at Ibrox.

Even if it was slightly ludicrous to issue a statement afterwards saying the absentees had taken advice from the club over how best to maintain public order inside the stadium.

In other words the men who were not there had listened to themselves advising against making them a high profile target for abuse and who knows what else.

We could shortly be embroiled in a debate over whether the man who would be the new figurehead at Rangers, Dave King, is a fit and proper person to run the club on the basis that he paid a huge sum of money to avoid being sent to prison in South Africa after falling foul of the country's tax laws.

Is it fit and proper that angry supporters of a football team create a mood of alarm which makes much criticised businessmen afraid to be seen in public for fear of retribution ?

There might very well be valid arguments to suggest the board and Derek Llambias, the Chief Executive, are making a bad job of running Rangers off the park.

But that should never be the cause of fear that vigilante groups will be formed to exact some non-corporate form of revenge for failure in the boardroom.

What will be will be when Rangers hold their Extraordinary General meeting in London on March 4, the extraordinary part being a Scottish football club holding a shareholders gathering in another country.

What can be said in advance is that King has shown a remarkable insight into where Rangers currently stand and has accurately highlighted the pitfalls that have to be avoided under his governance of the club or anybody else's control.

King says the club has reached a tipping point where Rangers have to avoid becoming an irrelevance within Scottish football. He believes a generation of supporters could be lost to the club, and if they do not pass down their love of Rangers to their children then the generation that comes after them will have no ingrained affection for the team either.

All of this was said to a group of Sunday newspaper journalists days before the cup defeat from Raith Rovers that was watched by a skeletal crowd at Ibrox.

The process of people being lost to Rangers is well under way and next month's battle for control of the club could have a huge effect on the immediate future, unless King and his cohorts are able to secure a majority shareholding at Ibrox.

You might ask yourself why the sitting board of directors would want to remain in charge of a place they are reluctant to visit in case their safety is endangered.

A state of affairs that is more than likely to get worse, rather than better, if the current board should manage to retain power.

You'd also be entitled to suspect that King has a greater understanding of just how bad things have become on the park, having said that he knew the team was bad but had no inclination it was as dire as it turned out to be on closer inspection.

Rangers need to hire a manager who can oversee the job of scrapping the team as it stands and starting over again with a clean sheet of paper on which can be written the names of those who can form a new side with what it takes to lift the club out of the doldrums.

The mind boggles at the size of the crowd who'll turn up on Friday night at Ibrox to see Rangers play Hibs, who've already beaten them home and away this season.

Winning promotion to the Premiership next season is beginning to look like a seriously jeopardised ambition for Kenny McDowall's team and it is surely distressing to see the toll that has been taken of that man since he was asked to take over from Ally McCoist.

The only thing going Rangers way at the moment is the reluctance of referees to impose a proper standard of punishment on Lee McCulloch.

The captain could, and should, have been sent off on successive weekends against Celtic and Raith for stamping offences.

If Chelsea's Diego Costa ever bothers to look at Scottish football on television he must wonder why he's currently serving a three game ban for the same offence while a different set of disciplinary rules appears to apply North of the border.

McCulloch is getting off lightly, which is more than can be said for a long suffering Rangers support and now a board of directors with a siege mentality.

The job of deciding if King is a fit and proper person to run a football club he once helped take into administration will be for others to deal with if he wins a shareholders ballot, and they're welcome to it.

Stewart Regan, the SFA's Chief Executive, is reviled by the Rangers support for the alleged crime of helping put the club into the bottom tier of Scottish football following liquidation.

A nonsense, but a problem never the less.

Campbell Ogilivie, the SFA President, was at Rangers in an administrative capacity for many years and will be accused of collusion by those who don't support the Ibrox club if King's chequered past is found to be no impediment to a return to the boardroom.

That's just the way it is in these parts, where trust is at a premium so far as football governance is concerned.

What is unarguable is that Rangers are enduring the bleakest days in the club's existence.

The difference between becoming an irrelevance and regaining a foothold on the mountain that has to be climbed to reach renewed respectability will be established in a London hotel next month.

The dangers inherent in getting that decision wrong can already be seen to be forming in the shape of empty seats at Ibrox highlighted by television cameras on a weekly basis.

Seats that will go un-occupied for years if King's assessment of Rangers' current situation is spot on. And it is.