When the time comes for Rangers to cast the net for another manager the search and the eventual negotiation with the chosen man will be an exercise in mutual desperation: a club on its knees doing a deal with a manager out of better options.
How does a club sell itself to a self-respecting manager when there is the elephant in the room of needing £8 million in emergency funding to keep the lights on beyond the end of January?
At Rangers' annual meeting on Monday the shareholders will be asked to approve another share issue to keep the life support machine plugged in for at least a few more months. Looking for a manager right now is akin to The Titanic's owners calling for a new captain in the minutes after the iceberg. The numbing gravity of Rangers' finances is the single, inescapable factor which shapes and informs all aspects of the club's future.
Rangers came perilously close to acting like a normal football club when McCoist's meeting with directors resulted in him staying rather than going. McCoist activated a 12-month notice period last week and in contractual terms there was no need for him or Rangers to accelerate his departure date (the football case for doing so may be overwhelming, but that's a separate point). The cheapest option for Rangers is to let the manager run down his contract. For as long as he is there no onerous additional expenses are incurred.
Moreover, if McCoist is still the manager he is obliged - unless he suddenly goes down with a bad cold - to attend the AGM. A human shield is a military term describing the deliberate placement and use of a non-combatant in or around targets to deter the enemy from launching attacks.
McCoist had Graham Wallace (the former chief executive) and (director) James Easdale on either side of him at last year's AGM. The pair would probably have hidden behind him if they could have gotten away with that. Who would benefit from having McCoist at his shoulder in front of the angry shareholders on Monday? Chairman David Somers? Non-executive director (and de facto chief executive) Derek Llambias? Easdale again? His brother Sandy (the football board chairman)? Every one of them.
For as long as McCoist remains a pay-off is deferred and so is the expense of recruiting a new managerial team. Good managers, managers worth appointing, do not come cheap.
McCoist's £750,000 salary is excessive but a premium must be paid to anyone who takes on the relentless scrutiny, pressure and profile of managing Rangers or Celtic and dealing with the west of Scotland football asylum. There is no ability to switch off and intrusion comes with the territory, which is why no-one in his right mind would take on the job for buttons. Good managers also incur other costs.
They expect their own accomplished backup team to come with them, plus a managerial infrastructure of scouts, youth coaches, sports scientists, video analysts and so on. These are areas Rangers have been identifying as having the potential for further cuts, not investment. Bluntly, being the manager of Rangers is far, far less appealing than it has ever been before.
Even so, there will be no shortage of candidates who will be prepared to submit themselves to these "hardships". McCoist began his own countdown clock by activating his notice period so he will leave whether it is next week, next month, the end of the season, whenever. Whenever the formalities of his departure are confirmed there will be a stampede of candidates rushing to fill the brogues.
Les Hutchison, the multi-millionaire who intends to take control of Motherwell, was asked during a weekend radio interview why he had bought some Rangers shares in 2013. Hutchison answered matter-of-factly: Walter Smith had just taken over as chairman at the time and Hutchison thought Rangers might soon be financially transformed.
There is nothing a businessman likes better than buying in low and selling out high. It was not one of his better ideas, he admitted, but the principle still stands.
Rangers remain a giant force because of their enormous number of supporters, and dozens and dozens of managers will be drawn to the idea of getting a foot in the door and being the incumbent if and when the club ever recovers. There were over 50 applicants when Motherwell were looking for a manager over the past few weeks. By that logic how many will Rangers get when the time comes?
Rumours about Billy Davies have been circling for weeks and within hours of McCoist's "resignation" bookmakers went through the gimmicky publicity stunt of naming him as the favourite. Davies is available and is a Rangers supporter who has been seen at Ibrox games recently. That alone has been enough to serve the rumour mill in the way that coal serves a steam engine.
After today's discussions between McCoist and the directors there is not yet a vacancy but the situation is fluid and if a share issue is approved on Monday and does successfully raise funds in the coming weeks it may be that the liquidity allows for one managerial team to be paid-off and another appointed.
It is almost eight years since Rangers had to look outside of Ibrox to find a manager. McCoist's reign is in its twilight and sooner or later that will hurl a board of directors into a market of which all of them, with the exception of former Newcastle managing director Llambias, are entirely ignorant. Like all the others at Rangers it is a problem which has been deferred, not addressed.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article