THE situation regarding the eligibility of Rangers' new signings could be messier only if it had been devised by the malfunctioning club itself.

It could hardly be described as the most pressing of the various issues for Ally McCoist at the moment, but there is no doubt the unnecessarily complicated web of rules and restrictions around his eight new signings would be enough to induce a headache.

Rangers could not use any of their new men as "trialists" in the Scottish League Cup and promptly crashed out to Forfar Athletic on Saturday. They could select two new players against Albion Rovers in the Ramsdens Cup first round but bafflingly will not be entitled to use any of them in the next round of that competition against Berwick Rangers. In the four SPFL League 1 games the club will play this month they can use two of the new men in each game, but no individual player can be a trialist in more than three league games. In addition to all of that, only players whose registrations were previously held in Scotland can be used as trialists at all this month, which means that Richard Foster, Arnold Peralta, Bilel Mohsni and Steven Smith cannot play competitively until September but Cammy Bell, Nicky Law, Jon Daly and Nicky Clark can.

Got all that? Confused? Registration embargoes are not meant to convenience clubs such as Rangers who are found guilty of rule-breaking, of course, but the complexity of the various individual competition rules does mean the club must delicately negotiate its way through a series of tripwires until the embargo is lifted on September 1. Fielding an ineligible player would lead to further sanctions.

Rangers face Brechin City and Stranraer in the league, Berwick in the Ramsdens Cup, then Airdrieonians and East Fife in two more league games before September 1. Even the new signings themselves are unclear about exactly when they can and cannot appear. "I don't think anyone knows what games we can play," said Daly. "Seriously though, I understand that we can play three games as a trialist but it's complicated as we can't play certain games. We couldn't play in the League Cup and we can't play in the second round of the Ramsdens Cup for some reason. The league games are what we're looking towards this month. We're just trying to get through them until September and we'll get going then.

"It's frustrating. You've done your pre-season and you want to play games now. Unfortunately we all can't play until September and that's just the hand we've been dealt. We need to get on with it, try and put our frustration aside, and when September comes about we can all knuckle down and get going. To be honest, I didn't really think about it that much [before joining the club]. Now that it's here, it is frustrating. I can only imagine how frustrating it is for the manager."

On the proviso that McCoist is still the manager on September 1 - the club is so unpredictable that making assumptions on most issues amounts to guesswork - it is a date he cannot get to quickly enough. The past five days have delivered evidence that there are currently two Rangers teams (albeit with a degree of overlapping personnel) and that one is significantly stronger than the other. The defeat in Forfar was suffered by last season's team and was all too typical of it. On Tuesday night a friendly against Newcastle United at Ibrox brought a much more convincing display by a team containing seven of the eight new signings.

It was only a pre-season friendly, of course, yet Newcastle are far, far superior to Forfar and the 1-1 draw and the nature of Rangers' performance gave McCoist real grounds for optimism. Bell made a number of good saves and Foster, Mohsni, Lee McCulloch and Lee Wallace looked an athletic back four capable of dealing with far more than just League 1 opposition. Ian Black anchored the midfield and Peralta, Lewis Macleod and Law offered lively support to Daly and the especially impressive Clark.

There was a combination of strength and energy in the team and some neat passing. "The manager wants to play more attractive football," said Daly. "I think he was criticised last year and he wants to address that. I'd like to think we'll play attacking football and have a go at teams, we want to win games and score plenty of goals. That's something I'm looking forward to.

"I thought our tactics were really good against Newcastle. You can't just go pressing high up the park, like we probably will in the league, because they've got quality and if you press as a team they'll pick you off. Forfar was a poor result for the club but that's football. We need to move on and move forward. We can't dwell on these results, if you dwell on them you'll just find yourself in a little rut and we need to bounce back."