It’s time to get out from under the blanket and deal with this mess

IT is nice for the season to have a steady narrative running through it. This year, it looks like being title-stripping. And that’s only Sir David Murray we are talking about.

Whether you believe the five championships won while Rangers were using Employee Benefit Trusts should be struck from the record or not, there is no question the Supreme Court decision to rule in favour of HMRC in ‘The Big Tax Case’ has reopened a particularly putrid can of worms.

Rangers chairman Dave King’s personal statement on Friday night certainly trashed what little was left of Murray’s legacy at Ibrox.

How sad no one felt so empowered to speak out about what was going on back in 2009 when it was supporters’ groups having all sorts of mud thrown at them for daring to stage a ‘We Deserve Better’ campaign.

King’s wish for this ugly part of Rangers’ history to be left in the past, though, is unlikely to be respected.

For starters, the SPFL need to get out from under the blanket and make it clear whether they believe the inquiry staged by Lord Nimmo Smith into the Ibrox club’s use of EBTs and those pesky side letters is worthy of being reviewed in the way Celtic, for one, wish.

Rangers looked to be in the clear over that particular tax avoidance scheme at the time it was ruled they gained no sporting advantage. It is hard to see them having titles taken away, but the matter does need to be put to bed once and for all.

One conversation we might also like to restart is the possible benefit of having an independent inquiry into the running of Scottish football as a whole.

We’ve had the Rangers meltdown, the five-way agreement, warnings of ‘Armageddon’ and ‘civil unrest’ from people who should have known better, the catastrophe that is Club Academy Scotland, referee strikes, a national team that has gone two decades without making a finals, a club game now with an inferior record in European competition to the League of Ireland. The list goes on. One thing for sure is that we all deserve better than that.