THAT’S YOUR PLOT

CLUBS IN CRISIS Mccoist feared Hart was trying to oust him

IAN hART dramatically quit the I brox board yesterday — j ust two months after Ally McCoist feared the non-executive director was behind a plot to oust him.

According to a well-placed Rangers source, McCoist was led to believe hart felt the manager should be shown the door following the 1-0 League Cup defeat to Forfar in August.

however, hart’s reasoning is t hought to actually have centred on McCoist’s postmatch attack on Charles Green as opposed to the result.

hart is believed to have been instrumental in bringing Green back to the club for a second spell and the Yorkshireman immediately sparked uproar by telling McCoist he had to win a

cup as well as League One. The manager responded by calling Green ‘an embarrassment’. Ironically, it was this outburst, rather than the on-park humiliation, that is alleged to have prompted Hart to seek the manager’s head. In the immediate aftermath of the game, Hart told McCoist there was a need for ‘calmess and stability’. But an Ibrox insider has told Sportsmail that McCoist was informed Hart had confided in a fellow director that the axe should fall after the manager’s verbal blast. McCoist learned of the alleged plot via a third party and immediately confronted Hart on his car speaker phone — with witnesses present — only for him to deny all knowledge of the conversation. Hart left the club yesterday morning — the official line being to concentrate on his charity work. Prospective new chairman Dave King, a key ally of McCoist, is understood to have been fully aware of the boardroom developments. It is believed Hart was behind the disastrous move to bring Green back to the club as a consultant in August — two months after he had quit in disgrace as chief executive. Green, whose consortium had bought the assets for £5.5million postliquidation in 2012, left the club after a string of controversies in June including alleged links with Craig Whyte, his references to McCoist’s team as the ‘worst in history’ and his casual use of racist language. Following claims that Hart had quit in protest at Craig Mather’s handling of the club, a Rangers source said last night: ‘It’s outrageous that Hart is being portrayed as some kind of victim. He was instrumental in Green’s return to the club. The fact is he wasn’t up to the many difficult questions he’d be facing over this at the AGM.’ Yesterday a Rangers statement read: ‘The company today announces that Ian Hart, non-executive director, has resigned from the board in order to pursue the charitable work in which he is involved more actively.’ McCoist, meanwhile, will try again to land former Hearts skipper Marius Zaliukas in January.