FRANK McGARVEY scored more than 200 goals in his senior career. He has never forgotten his debt to Kenny McDowall for setting up what he still regards as, quite possibly, the finest of them all.

It was a dark, October night at Love Street back in 1985. Their St Mirren team was 1-0 down to Slavia Prague following the first leg of a UEFA Cup first round tie in Czechoslovakia, but a Brian Gallagher effort had taken the game to extra-time and that's where McGarvey came into his element.

McDowall delivered a ball from the right, McGarvey, having already put the Buddies 2-0 in front, allowed it to roll between his feet and then flicked it with his right heel past the goalkeeper, Zdenek Hruska, in the most audacious fashion to complete a victory still cherished by supporters of the Paisley club to this day.

He still lights up when talking about it now. When talking about McDowall, the player and colleague, he is similarly effusive. It is only when discussing the predicament his former team-mate now finds himself in at Ibrox that a cloud begins to descend.

McDowall was a good Rangers man in a St Mirren dressing-room that had its fair share of Celtic supporters, including McGarvey. He always harboured a desire to move into coaching when his career was over and finding himself in charge of his boyhood loves at this stage in his life should have been a dream assignment.

The truth is, it is a living nightmare. McDowall admitted as much himself when confessing the job was 'tainted' at his thoroughly joyless coronation at Murray Park last week. A 4-0 hammering at the hands of Hibernian in his debut fixture as caretaker manager has just made him look even more like a man not so much in the wrong movie as one caught in some kind of personal hell.

As McDowall once provided McGarvey with a goal that added to his reputation, the one-time Celtic striker is happy to repay the favour with some timely words of guidance that may just help to preserve what remains of his.

"If Kenny came to me and asked for advice, I would tell him to get out of Rangers right now and get something elsewhere," stated McGarvey. "He is not going anywhere at Rangers.

"I understand he is between the devil and the deep blue sea.

"He might feel he would be letting the fans down by leaving, but it is the people running the club that are the real problem.

"He has done his apprenticeship, coached on both sides of the Old Firm. He ought to be looking at a nice job, managing a team in his own right, at this stage in his career.

"Instead, he has been left in the middle of carnage, really, stuck with a 'Mission Impossible' in trying to rectify what has gone on. I don't know anyone who could go in there and do anything without the boardroom and ownership issues being properly resolved.

"Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho are geniuses. They'd go to Rangers, have a look and say: 'I can't help you'.

"Kenny was a Rangers supporter when we were at St Mirren and there were Celtic supporters in that dressing-room as well, but we always gave 100 per cent for St Mirren on the park.

"Kenny even scored the winner at Ibrox on the opening day of the 1989-90 season, so you could never say he wasn't a fair-minded and wholly professional guy.

"He set up that backheel for me against Slavia Prague and was always a great worker and a really good guy. I feel sorry for him.

"He has been at Celtic and Rangers as a coach and has served his apprenticeship. Under normal circumstances, Rangers would be a brilliant job for him, but life is all about timing and he has taken over the manager's role in what is probably the worst period of Rangers' history.

"I don't think he has a chance. I have never seen such greed at a football club in all my life with one person after another coming in and just trying to take so much money out."

McGarvey is often invited by the media to address perceived ills at Celtic. He admits that, prior to this interview, he has never wanted to become involved in talking about the decline and fall of their arch-rivals across the city of Glasgow.

It pains him to see McDowall caught up in the middle of it all, though. What's more, even though he was often the target of abuse from them back in the day, it is the Rangers support that he feels particularly sorry for.

"All I see is Rangers supporters paying their money and seeing something that has no connection with what they have seen in the past," he said. "They are still hanging in, but I don't know how long that can go on.

"I cannot believe the problems at the club have not been resolved by now. Greed continues to represent its biggest problem."

McDowall was installed as caretaker after Ally McCoist had been placed on gardening leave and immediately instructed by the board to tell Ian Durrant that he was being removed from all contact with the first-team. He did as he was told, but McGarvey believes he should never have been put in that position.

"The people at the top should have passed the news onto Durrant," said McGarvey. "That should not have been entrusted to Kenny. It is just shambolic.

"The most important relationship within a club is that between manager and chairman. They have to be on the same wavelength. They are not even on the same planet at Rangers, so how can it work?"