It is rare these days for the Scottish FA to strike a PR victory.

After all, what are "the blazers" there for but to be kicked and lampooned? Well, no more. Friday's extraordinary skewering of Rangers by Scottish football's ruling body set a new benchmark for governing mandarins fighting back.

The SFA's 100 pages of judicial notes on the recent Rangers tribunal set out in excoriating detail just why they doled out the punishments they did to the Ibrox club. Against a backdrop of wailing and bleating from Ally McCoist and Rangers about the injustice the judicial panel allegedly heaped on them, here in searing detail was the evidence piled high to rebuff such a claim.

You might say the SFA have been scheming in choosing to publish such a report. You might even accuse the governing body of faint traces of a dirty war in electing to make public their "notes" on their panel's proceedings. But, by heavens, in revealing the exhaustive methods by which they examined the Rangers case, the SFA have left the Ibrox club fairly filleted.

The report is a veritable compost-heap of evidence for the charges against Rangers, each one of them examined in precise, remorseless language. As if some of us didn't know it already, here was a football club, in the hands of reckless men, which cut corners, flouted rules, didn't pay taxes and in general had a thoroughgoing contempt for the laws by which every other club had to abide.

Those who try to claim that, in the dispensing of justice, a distinction should be made between Rangers and Craig Whyte are in effect arguing for Rangers to get off scot-free with the whole business.

By this line of argument, why not also make a distinction between the club and Sir David Murray? Why not excuse the whole EBTs debacle on account of it being Murray's decision and not that of Rangers? Indeed, why not absolve every tax dodge and wheeze in the history of British football merely by blaming a club's chairman or CEO?

This would be a cheats' charter. It would allow every club – or indeed every business – in the country to claim: "It wusnae us, it wiz the boss." This is not the way to dispense prohibitive justice.

Doubtless, more gangs of Rangers fans, egged on by the intellectually malnourished message-boards, will stage further protest marches in indignation at their club's punishment. Well, the dunces who hope to blithely ride roughshod over the SFA had better have their wits about them. The SFA have been unsparing in their methodology, outlining their protocol, sifting the mountain of evidence and duly delivering their verdict.

The report's conclusion – that Rangers' wrongdoing could only have been beaten by a match-fixing allegation in terms of cheating – is as damning as it comes. The club is set to appeal the case this week but, after reading this 100-page document, I will be amazed if the appellate tribunal shows much leniency towards Ibrox.

Myth upon myth has been busted, the most bogus being that relating to Sir David Murray. As the SFA assert, it is just about inconceivable that Murray could have been "duped" by Whyte – as he has claimed – given the stated urgings of Martin Bain, Murray's right-hand man at Ibrox, not to sell Rangers to this chancer back in the spring of last year.

Those in our media who, in their excruciating fashion, will still not utter a cheep of criticism about Murray are going to find their professional lives intolerably difficult after this report. It is stretching succulent lamb journalism to breaking-point not to cast even a syllable of culpability in Murray's direction.

As the SFA report confirms, the trigger for this whole Rangers saga was the Murray Group's beholdened debt of around £700m to the Lloyds Banking Group. The bankers called time on Murray and, with a bayonet being pointed to his neck, Rangers FC became a sacrificial lamb in being sold to Whyte.

I've said it repeatedly: David Murray is not a bad person. He only ever wanted the best for Rangers and for 10 years that marriage proved very successful. But, ultimately, Murray has been the unintending architect of Rangers' downfall. History will record a dire verdict on his role in the club's demise.

In the context of this coming week the SFA have also stolen a march. Given the desire to know the names of those presiding on the appeal panel – and I think I perceive the dubious motives behind this request – the governing body has chosen to call the doughballs' bluff by naming them in advance.

For the record, they will be led by Lord Carloway, one of Scotland's highest-ranking legal figures, whose credentials even the bigots and idiots will toil to find fault with. Craig Graham, the Spartans chairman, and Allan Cowan, the former Partick Thistle chairman, must also brace themselves for the onslaught of vitriol.

Rangers will come good again. I really hope the club is revived, sooner rather than later. First, though, it must take its medicine, and quit its bleating.