When Celtic were moving towards the brink of bankruptcy in the mid-1990s, the challenge to the families who owned the club was inspired by Brian Dempsey.

Other individuals supplied the credence, in particular Fergus McCann, who provided the money to buy the club, but Dempsey created the sense that something notable could be achieved. He was the figure who trawled round the supporters clubs and generated the momentum among the fans to press for change. Charismatic and, crucially, plausible because they saw in him a reflection of their own values, sentiment and background, Dempsey led the way.

Even in the midst of a crisis, Rangers fans would cringe at the notion of following their oldest rivals. That hostile attitude would be self-defeating, since the Ibrox support is in need of their own figure to gather behind. Paul Murray, the former Rangers director, is making progress, and he has emerged as the most likely individual to pull the financial resources, business acumen and support of the fan groups together.

He has stepped into the public domain to make his case for a new ownership structure. In a meeting with the Rangers Supporters Trust, Supporters Assembly and Supporters Association yesterday, he began to make the case for believing in his vision of a consortium called the Blue Knights. The fans are susceptible to promises of a grand scheme that will see them granted a say in the running of the club, but naivety is also in scant supply. The RST tried to push forward a similar proposal while Sir David Murray was trying to sell Rangers last year, and there is a view that administration has brought a better chance to realise the ambition.

"The fans are looking into the abyss, so you will get people prepared to make sacrifices if they can save the club," says Mark Dingwall, a director of the Rangers Supporters Trust. "Paul wants to build a team of all the talents, which is himself with other individuals who have the financial means to put themselves at the disposal of the club. They will also invite individual fans to invest. The structure of the club would be a shareholding, and no one person would be able to hold the majority. The board would then reflect the various stakeholders in the club by having elections."

Murray was ousted as a director after Whyte took control of the club last May. A chartered accountant who once worked for Deutsche Bank, he is wealthy without having the money to buy the club. A consortium that involves fans and other individuals with money to fund the deal might have been shaped by resourceful thinking, but it is also a better model of ownership.

Scottish football does not generate enough revenue for its clubs to be seen as money-making businesses. Individuals driven to own them tend to be motivated by a misguided notion of what their involvement will bring, and the consequences of that have been catastrophic for Rangers. Empowering fans, and preventing any single individual from owning the majority shareholding, would bring stability and a sense of perspective.

There is an element of idealism, and British football tends to recoil from any initiative that does not seem time-served or rooted in old values. Smaller clubs than Rangers have, after a series of struggles, made forms of fan ownership work. There is vast potential in the size of the Ibrox support, but also greater logistical problems in pulling the fans together, administering any membership scheme and establishing the voting rights that would provide an influence on the running of the club. A cosmopolitan outlook is an advantage, though.

"There are various models," says Dingwall. "For tactical reasons, the club will probably continue to be a limited company but we believe there are mechanisms we can bring in that democratises by a combination of a share issue and also via a membership scheme, akin to those in Germany or in particular those in Portugal, where you have huge numbers of fans across the world contributing and not just the shareholders on a yearly basis. In Portugal, if you're a member for so many years you get an additional vote. From the meeting, our big thing is to save the club and the deal we want to back will involve fan representation, the good governance of the club, transparency and not one man owning the club."

Business decisions tend to be cold and pragmatic, but Rangers fans are prepared to allow for sentiment to be an influence. They want to exit administration in the conventional manner, by agreeing a deal with creditors, rather than liquidation leading to the formation of a new company. Murray may share their view, even if it involves taking on the potential liabilities of the big tax case, as well as the other debts run up during Craig Whyte's ownership.

A moral argument can be made. For Rangers to move beyond the indignity of their plight, a period of penance, or of paying their dues, would allow the club to regain its authority. The present seems a wreckage of old certainties, but possibilities can still be found. When Tom Cannon, Professor of Strategic Development at The University of Liverpool, did some research for Rangers, he found the club to be the third most recognisable football brand in Asia, behind only Liverpool and Manchester United.

Potential members of a fans' consortium are spread across the globe. Murray could be the sole figure who draws them all together. It is a difficult challenge, but not beyond reach.