He has listened to the spiels from Craig Whyte, then Bill Miller, then Charles Green. He has had his hopes raised by Paul Murray, Brian Kennedy, Jim McColl, Walter Smith and others, only to have them dashed.
He has argued the Rangers case to the Scottish Football Association and the Scottish Premier League, and stood in front of the men from the Scottish Football League. He has talked contracts with the representatives from PFA Scotland and taken phone calls from his best players telling him, one by one, that they were off. He has considered resigning only to decide he would carry on.
He has been an outspoken, sometimes provocative, voice for Rangers and acted as their figurehead. To put it bluntly, he has often looked burnt out and utterly knackered by it all over the past five months. Remember the days when Ally McCoist was just a manager, like all the others?
The twists and turns in this Rangers saga have made fools of most of us and few are rash enough to make bold declarations about how things might yet unfold.
The "big tax case" is still out there, so is the SPL's investigation into years of alleged undisclosed payments to players, Green's regime could run out of money and plunge Rangers back into administration, and the club will have to lay off staff unless there is a massive upturn soon in season-ticket sales.
But, with due recognition of all that, there has been a feeling of relative clarity around Ibrox over the past 10 days or so. They know the league in which they will be playing and they know their first couple of cup opponents. In the next couple of days, and despite the obvious friction between them, Rangers newco and the governing body will likely reach an agreement on the transfer of the oldco's SFA membership.
McCoist is inching closer to the point where he can get back to what he is paid for. There will be private moments of exasperation for him as the Rangers first-team bus pulls up at Ochilview, Shielfield or Galabank in the coming months, and getting used to a half-empty Ibrox will be painful, but his routine is about to start feeling familiar again.
He has signings to make, a team to build, and a league championship to win. He will also want Rangers strong enough that they are not embarrassed if they draw any SPL team – and one in particular – in the cups.
The days of Rangers inevitably landing any player they are linked with are long gone but it is still instructive to consider the names with which they have been linked in recent days. Ian Black, Dean Shiels, Francisco Sandaza, Craig Beattie, Steve Jennings, Scott Robertson, Robbie Neilson, Garry Kenneth and Gary Teale: that list includes a Northern Ireland internationalist and five players with Scotland caps.
Frankly, that amounts to an SPL-standard set of players being identified to win the Irn-Bru Third Division. Rangers look as though they intend to do a Gretna: buying players of SPL and first-division calibre to skoosh their way through the two bottom leagues.
For the players they attempt to sign there will be decisions to make. Some will look at the third division as a no-man's land. Footballing Siberia. There will be World Cup ties over the next two seasons and the potential of reaching Brazil: anyone who harbours international hopes will have to turn down any approach from Rangers (similarly, Lee Wallace can forget about adding to his six caps unless he changes his mind about staying).
But plenty of others will still fancy the idea of being a Rangers player, and in some cases the money may still be better than they could get elsewhere. Players without an offer from anywhere else will not be snobby about playing for Rangers in the bottom tier.
Given his relative financial advantages McCoist will have some freedom to build a squad once SFA membership is granted, although he will have to be quick about it. It would then be humiliating for him if winning the third division causes even the slightest difficulty for Rangers. It is believed they are prepared to pay £4000 and £5000 per week to players in a division where £150 per week is the norm.
McCoist will need to add eight, nine, maybe 10 players who can win consecutive promotions, given that they could already be playing second-division football before the one-year transfer embargo ends on September 1 next year.
At a much-reduced level, he will be back to what Rangers managers have been able to do for decades: buy better players than the vast majority of teams they're up against.
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