Paul Murray and his Blue Knights consortium, with their brazen intention to buy the club and avoid liquidation, have seen to that. But this Rangers saga, and the salvation of the club, may be a long way off yet.
The Blue Knights, with Murray and Dave King the figurehead and economic strength respectively, are pinning their hopes on striking a Company Voluntary Arrangement with Rangers' creditors. Yet until the tribunal's ruling on the big tax case is known – the club is threatened with a potential £49 million-plus back-taxes bill – how can that happen?
There are various theories currently doing the rounds about Rangers and HMRC. The most popular – and possibly believable – is that the revenue service has privately intimated it will strike a sympathetic deal with Rangers which will vouchsafe a CVA going through. Others, however, still believe that HMRC will prove no such pushover at all.
One business analyst, who has studied the economic circus of Scottish football for the past 20 years, told me yesterday: "I've seen all the speculation about HMRC being 'accommodating', but I believe they will still want their pound of flesh from Rangers. The fact is the HMRC position remains the great unknown in this saga."
It is a tantalising situation for Paul Murray. In October last year, on the BBC Scotland programme which so impressively helped to skewer Craig Whyte, Murray himself sat before a camera and said he had been amazed that Whyte had gone ahead and taken on Rangers, given the potentially huge liability (the HMRC case) which still hung over the club. "I'd never seen that before anywhere in my 25 years of buying and selling companies – a guy taking on a historical tax liability like that," Murray said. Yet here we are 10 months down the line and, with the HMRC outcome still not known, Murray is himself in a near-identical situation. It has left some strongly believing that the ex-Rangers director knows more about HMRC's intentions than the rest of us.
The other focus this weekend shifts strongly on to King, the real economic power behind Murray and the Blue Knights' bid. If anyone seriously doubts how much money King has earned in his near 30-year sojourn in South Africa, then consider this: SARS, the South African revenue service, are still chasing him for around 900 million SA rand in alleged unpaid taxes.
In sterling, that is around £75m. Just how much money do you have to earn in the first place to be asked to stump up such a tax bill? Blithely, two years ago, King was reported in Pretoria to be happy to pay back around £25m to SARS, which was rejected. Either way, it seems this exiled Glaswegian, as well as befriending Gary Player and regularly caddying for him at the Masters in Augusta, has accumulated serious wealth.
Yet King also brings "baggage", which is why Stewart Regan, the SFA chief executive, has been happy to tip off the press in the past 24 hours that King would not pass the governing body's belaboured "fit and proper persons" test if he tried to become an Ibrox director under any new club ownership.
It is well known that, in South Africa, King has been accused of tax evasion, money-laundering and even racketeering – all emotive allegations, many of which have yet to reach a courtroom.
Amidst all this, it is enough for Regan and the SFA to hurriedly point out that, purely on the basis of having been a board member of the last Ibrox regime which led to the club towards insolvency, King would not be allowed to become a Rangers director.
Yet, within the Blue Knights, King's power and influence could not be over-estimated. Indeed, they might well be viewed as essential. King's financial input is a primary factor in the Blue Knights' ability to restructure Rangers and rebuild the team. King is a key – if elusive – cog in this unfolding Rangers drama.
If I were either Regan or Neil Doncaster, the SPL chief exec-utive, I would be praying that this Murray/Blue Knights bid somehow comes off. Doncaster is currently in an impossible situation: on the one hand, if Rangers were liquid-ated and died, the SPL member clubs would be under enormous pressure to punish any 'newco' by means of banishment from the SPL, possibly even to the Irn-Bru Third Division.
Yet what could SPL chief Doncaster – or anyone else, for that matter – do without Rangers? The worth of the SPL in terms of TV rights is reduced to a relative pittance if either half of the Old Firm is taken away.
Can you imagine the call Doncaster would have to make to Barney Francis, managing director of Sky Sports, with whom Doncaster has just struck a new deal?
"Erm, Barney, bad news. We've had to punish Rangers over this bankruptcy bus-iness. They are now in the Third Division.
"There will be no Old Firm derbies for three years - but Rangers should be back by 2015."
For all concerned – excepting crowing Celtic fans – it is best if Rangers emerge intact from administration.
One thing is clear: Craig Whyte is dead meat. Despite tech-nically owning around 90% of Rangers, it is striking the way the club's administrators, Duff & Phelps, speak about selling the club or doing this or that deal with scarcely a passing mention of Rangers' current owner.
Whyte, almost certainly now denuded of his secured cred-itor status, appears to have as much sway at Ibrox these days as the stadium's cleaners.
I don't know a single person who can fathom why he got into this mess. He has almost comically miscalculated the scrutiny he would come under while attempting his various shenanigans.
I find Whyte a ludicrous, shambolic figure, almost to the point of pity.
