GARY KEOWN: IDIOCY AND INERTIA RULE AT RANGERS

IT doesn’t matter if they pluck some kind of rabbit out of the hat — heaven forfend, maybe even a manager — in time for Thursday’s annual general meeting. There should be blood on the carpet when the Rangers board emerge from hiding at Glasgow’s Clyde Auditorium.

The events of the past 48 hours have made it so. If a timely illustration of everything that is wrong at Ibrox was required, it came on Friday, the latest in a long line of days to forget for this struggling, rudderless club.

It started with Derek McInnes pretty much confirming he has promised to stay at Aberdeen, involved Barry Ferguson and Ally McCoist having a go at the Ibrox board — it is bad when ‘Rangers men’ start turning on their own — and ended with Graeme Murty, out of place and hung out to dry.

The interim manager was brought close to tears by this abysmal squad of duds and bottle merchants that two years of mismanagement of the football department have brought together at ruinous expense. No manager, no faith in the directors, no accountability at boardroom level, no hope on the pitch. All boxes ticked, just in case you were not entirely sure what a mess the place is, in a matter of hours.

You can be sure moves will already be afoot to stage-manage the AGM in the best possible way. There will be talk of balance sheets, investors and improving figures to try to divert attention from the basket case which is the footballing side of the club.

It should not be forgotten among all this, though, that there have been thousands of people investing money in the club since it fell apart in 2012. Their cash has not been given in the form of soft loans to be turned into equity. And they are getting nothing back for what they have put in.

They are the season-book holders, the supporters who travelled to Dens Park on Friday night fearing the worst and got it. For all the backing they provided, financially and otherwise, to help get chairman Dave King and his team into office, they are being treated very poorly.

Their relationship with the board seems remote at best. Still, that maybe should not come as a surprise as the likes of King, Paul Murray and Alastair Johnston were hardly seen as close to the fans during their time in office in Sir David Murray’s ill-fated era.

Look at the managerial situation. The board is not communicating. Their last unattributable statement on the club website served to inform the public that nothing had been done two weeks on from Pedro Caixinha’s dismissal.

This is where managing director Stewart Robertson has some explaining to do. He runs the place day to day. Yet, he is never seen or heard. Where does he fit into the decision-making process? Indeed, what is that process, exactly? It does seem a little unwieldy.

And do not forget, he was also on the panel who appointed Caixinha, alongside Graeme Park and Andrew Dickson, a guy who has survived so many earth-shifting events at Rangers that Kim Jong-un could drop The Big One on his office and you would still fancy him to emerge from under the desk clutching a brand new EBT.

Even the good news of Sports Direct renegotiating their retail agreement in June was sullied by the recent revelation they were paid £3million to do so. A fact King chose to omit at the time — shortly before going on again about how Celtic had won only two-in-a-row titles because Rangers were not around for a while.

Dog-whistle statements and bans on green boots have only helped make Rangers a club whose public profile is marked by idiocy as well as inertia and ineptitude.

Chaotic recruitment, little evident forward planning, wasted millions, back-to-front thinking and insulting, low-level flim-flam aimed at the lowest common denominator have been brought into sharp focus by the team’s continuing slide.

They are worse now than they were under Mark Warburton (remember the shambolic nature of his departure?) — and that is saying something!

No wonder poor Murty was all over the place emotionally after that humbling at Dundee. The guy must feel like a punchbag, shoved into the line of fire time and time again.

He remains in the dark over how much longer he will have to stumble on as caretaker. Just like everyone else. Not quite the brave, new world of openness and transparency King promised when taking over the reins in 2015?

The main shareholders putting money into the club are hardly going to move on. King says he will step down when the time is right. But, despite ongoing issues with the Takeover Panel, there is little indication he believes that is now.

There are a host of questions senior management should be made to face.

M WITH another £7.2m of soft loans needed until 2019, when will the club be able to sustain itself?

M WHAT kind of finance is available to rebuild the squad and what are the plans and expectations relating to prospective share issues?

M IS it now accepted that postponing plans for a director of football and appointing Caixinha, with a patchy record and reputation for starting a fight in an empty house, on a three-year deal with an £8m transfer kitty was a catastrophic error of judgment?

M WAS there any succession planning in place at the time of his sacking? If not, why not?

M WHAT is director of football Mark Allen’s exact remit and why has this never been made clear?

Trying to find some mugs to buy Carlos Pena and Eduardo Herrera will surely be part of it.

The more you look back on Caixinha’s time, the more incredible it seems. Like a bad trip.

One week, he’s the devil. The next, he’s a vampire. McInnes is jealous of him. Tommy Wright’s spying on him. Embarrassing.

Caixinha felt he was painted as a circus clown. He was that and more, all right. The Big Top is now about to go on tour to the Clydeside and it will be interesting to see whether Robertson, Dickson or someone else is in line to be the Human Cannonball.

Certainly, there should be plenty of people breathing fire. It could be one heck of a show.