It was a remarkable experience watching Brian Stockbridge, the Rangers finance director, being interviewed on the club's official TV station the other day.
The phrase "Nero fiddles while Rome burns" sprang to mind, as extreme and inappropriate as that analogy might be.
While presiding over what to most Rangers fans seemed a shocking set of financial figures, Stockbridge had the air of a man presenting a marvellous success story over these past 12 months.
Rangers, Stockbridge averred, are to be "envied" and are in a "very strong financial position". The club, he said, was "financially secure". He stated that its trading position was "going well".
This is abysmal nonsense. Rangers made a £14.4 million loss this year and, unless the business plan is ripped up, will probably make losses next year and in 2014-15. The club will desperately require a fresh cash injection from somewhere over the next 12 months.
How all this equates to "a position to be envied" is beyond everyone, save for Mr Stockbridge.
There is no need to labour these Rangers figures to June 30, except to reinforce this. The club's income, at £19 million, is pitiful, if not unexpected. Its player-salary scale, at £7.8 million, just looks reckless. Worst of all are these offensive salaries and bonuses paid to characters like Stockbridge, at a time when the club was haemorrhaging money at a monthly rate.
In his interview Stockbridge expressed contrition of a sort at receiving a bonus of around £200,000 for Rangers winning the Third Division last season. But it was contrition after the event, with the figure exposed, and fans' revulsion at the revelation. This is not the kind of contrition that impresses.
There is no one single figure to blame for Rangers' financial mess. It was a collegiate responsibility involving Charles Green, who was the club's CEO for nine months of this period, and Malcolm Murray, the Rangers chairman at the time, along with Stockbridge.
For some reason, rather than commit Rangers to a self-sufficient course of action, with a sober and realistic business plan, these men established a budget as if Rangers were still in the top flight, with all its attendant income streams.
The damage done has been significant. Due to club costs and salaries being far in excess of its income potential, the £22 million raised via the IPO has been frittered away, never mind the spectre of suspect fees being involved.
Last summer, for all their ills, the Rangers International FC had a golden chance to wipe the slate clean, with a rebuilding plan, with an emphasis on player youth, and with organic growth as its leitmotif.
Instead, a business plan was established which made executives and other principals pretty rich, while the club burned up money. It is little wonder some Rangers fans are irate.
A symptom of this Ibrox excess is the £825,000 in total remuneration paid to manager Ally McCoist during this period.
Let's just get this right: McCoist was paid the equivalent of almost £16,000 a week to see off the motely troupe of plumbers and postmen who stood in Rangers' way in the Third Division? This is fiscal madness.
I don't blame McCoist for accepting the financial packages put to him. But nor do I blame him for feeling a mite embarrassed by his income, and for volunteering now to take a pay cut.
The task facing Brian Stockbridge, if he remains in office, is this: how to make Rangers self-sufficient?
It is the only way forward for the club, given all its recent woes. But self-sufficiency has many merits, even if cash-rich Rangers executives can't seem to grasp this.
A "lean" Rangers, with a team built around youth, and a player/management salary scale appropriate to these times, would appeal to many fans. They would admire the club for being prudent and self-sufficient as it played its way back to the top.
Rangers have breathing space in which to do this, but have so far shunned the opportunity. The ludicrous scenario of players earning £7000 a week and a manager earning twice that amount is an affront to such an outlook.
There is a business writer in Scotland who keeps saying to me: "Rangers just don't get it…their key execs just don't get the reality of things."
These recent audited accounts appear to prove the point.
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