THERE may come a time when Dave King and Mike Ashley are thrown together whether they like it or not.

That has the potential to be just a little bit awkward. Three months ago King was trying to buy control of Rangers for £16 million and wanted to run things past Ashley. Men with King's money and influence aren't used to being shown discourtesy, let alone being ignored completely, but Ashley didn't give a damn.

"I attempted to meet with Mr Ashley on my visit but neither he, nor his colleague, Mr Bishop, acknowledged my request for a meeting," said King at the time. So just to be clear: not only did Ashley not grant King a meeting, he didn't even give him the respect of a response.

Ashley and the Rangers board have had no time for King since he publicly called for fans to starve them out. Last March he said supporters should release funds on a pay-as-they-play basis rather than fund the club via conventional season ticket sales. In November he went further, calling on them to boycott matches altogether and stop buying official merchandise.

The dynamic between King and Ashley has fascinating ever since, and it could be even more so. If King is right, and he can command more than 50 per cent of the registered shareholding at a general meeting, then Rangers can say goodbye to David Somers and to James and Sandy Easdale.

Derek Llambias and Barry Leach would be instantly removed from the board and, soon enough, be relieved of their duties as chief executive and finance director respectively. Doubtless both would be due weighty severance payments on account of the usual, grotesquely long notice periods. King, if he gets his way, would simply have to bite the bullet and sanction those.

But Ashley's position is different. There can be no clean break with him; no day when King, Paul Murray and John Gilligan take over and Ashley is swept away. Ashley is owed £3 million in loans to and no-one should be surprised if the board throws more fuel on the fire by announcing that it will take another £10m off him - secured against Ibrox and Murray Park, of course - to keep the lights on for another few months.

If King gets in via an EGM over the next six weeks or so that initial £3m loan could be repaid soon enough and presumably most of the £10m would still be in the bank accounts and therefore available to return to Ashley, too. In that event Rangers' debt to him would be cleared, loosening one aspect of his hold on the club.

The distorted relationship between the amount of shares he holds, 8.9 percent of the stock, and the influence he wields on the club would also be immediately addressed by appointing a new set of directors. Ashley would go from having two placemen on the board to none. He would have no further say on Rangers' ongoing decision-making.

But he would not be removed. The contracts, those famously onerous contracts, will keep him attached to Rangers whether there's a new board or not. Comparisons between "Ashley's Rangers" and "Ashley's Newcastle United" are inevitable but in some respects it instructive to look at Oldham Athletic.

They don't play at Boundary Park any more, they play at SportsDirect.com Park. The shirt sponsor is SportsDirect.com. Their strips are made by Sondico, which is owned by Sports Direct. Ashley doesn't own 8.9 percent of Oldham. He doesn't own any of it. But he is deep, deep into the club via a £1m-a-year, five year sponsorship deal, the best they've ever had.

The long-term problem for King and the Douglas Park consortium, if they get in, is that Ashley is deep, deep into Rangers too via his control of the retail operation. The Union of Fans' recent analysis found that of every £10 supporters spend on merchandise only 75p goes to the club.

Crucially, it is believed that there is an astonishing seven-year notice period on Ashley's key commercial contracts. The deals are watertight, needless to say. Neither King, Park nor anyone else can rip them up in order to give Rangers a clean start.

Might Ashley be open to renegotiating on terms more favourable to Rangers and less favourable to himself? Even in the absurd Rangers saga, that sounds like a silly question.

And Another Thing...

A schoolboy match normally of interest only to immediate friends and family has far more significance than that for Scotland this week. The national Under-15 team takes on the Republic of Ireland in Kilarney on Friday. Why does it matter? Eight of the Scotland squad have graduated via the national performance schools.

The vision, championed by Mark Wotte and the SFA, was for a handful of performance school kids to be playing for the full Scotland team by 2020. The first intake has made it through to international level for the first time and will pull on the colours against the Irish. Let's wish them well, and let's hope there are some gems.

And Finally...

As things stand the Celtic careers of Kris Commons and Gary Mackay-Steven are not going to overlap. If no deals are done on them in the coming days Mackay-Steven will arrive in the summer just as Commons leaves. It would be lunacy if they let Commons go to Bolton right now. As for Mackay-Steven, he'll be a hit if he's half the Celtic player Commons has been.