Certainty is that most elusive of qualities.

There is an endless supply of intrigue coming out of Rangers as several groups play a role in this financial, legal and emotional epic, full of negotiations, stark warnings, progress and a slew of revelations. The coming week is likely to be the same.

Paul Murray, head of the Blue Knights consortium, will meet the administrators in the next 48 hours to hold further talks about his bid to buy the club. Murray's group, which includes all three major supporters' organisations, as well as the finance fund Ticketus, have positioned themselves at the forefront of a number of interested parties.

Receiving the backing of Ticketus is considered a smart move. They lent £24.4 million to Craig Whyte in return for profits from future season ticket sales, and Whyte used £18m of that to pay off Lloyds Bank when he bought Rangers from Sir David Murray. The mechanics of that deal have convinced the administrators that Whyte's status as a secured creditor is worthless – there is no evidence of him having invested any of his own cash – but it also leaves Ticketus vulnerable to losing their money.

Yet some sources close to the situation are all but certain that Ticketus's arrangement would not hold with a new owner. The company may have decided their choice is to embark on lengthy and costly moves to challenge Whyte to try to get back some of their money, or to essentially write off their involvement with Whyte and strike a new deal with his successor, and they may see the Blue Knights as the best hope of recouping some of the money they face losing.

"Paul [Murray] has had some discussion about their position," said Andy Kerr, of the Rangers Supporters Assembly. "They're nervous they will end up severely burned in this deal if it goes wrong. We're talking about reducing the amount due to them, repaying over a longer period but, most important, getting capital up front if the takeover is successful."

Buying the club while it exits administration through a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) with the creditors would involve Whyte passing on his majority shareholding. The administrators are confident they can either take control of that – as his Wavetower company (now Rangers FC Group) owes the club money – or reduce the value of Wavetower's influence to such an extent that it becomes an irrelevance.

The administrators have set a deadline of Friday for indicative offers to be made. They insist other interested parties are also serious about bidding for the club. Although they stress they want to avoid selling the club to anybody who does not pass the Scottish Football Association's fit and proper persons criteria, as Whyte and Dave King, the second largest shareholder, now fail to do, they are only obliged to sell to the highest bidder.

"Anybody who doesn't pass the fitness test won't necessarily be discarded there and then, but we have to treat them with extreme caution because the last thing that RFC needs is another Craig Whyte character," said Paul Clark, of the administrators Duff & Phelps. "We believe that a new owner will be installed before the end of the season.

"We have one or two parties that talk to the media, and other parties who have been quietly and diligently getting on with their business outside the glare of the media, and we are taking them just as seriously. I am not ruling anybody out, I'm just saying that nobody should assume that the only serious bidders are the ones who are in the public domain."

Clark can raise a better return for creditors if there is a bidding contest for the club. There are still obstacles to Rangers exiting administration through a CVA, though, since the outcome of the tax tribunal into the club's use of employee benefit trusts could deliver a significant bill. This would have to be drawn into any CVA offer, which the creditors then vote to accept or reject, but Clark is confident that a sale can still be achieved.

"We can't predict the size of the bill, if there is one," he said. "Whatever the debt, it just dilutes the amount available to the creditors. As a very significant stakeholder, HMRC shouldn't be looking to destroy value. They have never suggested they are going to be belligerent. They are not at all happy with the conduct of the people who have run RFC, particularly over the last few months."

Clark also confirmed that after agreeing to wage cuts "more than a handful" of senior players had clauses inserted into their contracts entitling them to free transfers in the event of Craig Whyte retaining or regaining control of the club. No commitment has been made to pay money owed to Dundee United after their William Hill Scottish Cup tie at Ibrox, but the administrators are in discussions with the SFA over the matter.

The situation, for every development, still contains many unresolved strands.