By Graham Barnstaple
February 14 2012

It has been announced this afternoon Rangers have appointed an administrator to take over their affairs from this afternoon.

After lodging the papers to kick off the process of administration at the Court of Session yesterday the HMRC stepped in with a counter move to appoint their own administrator’s today.

After much toing and froing at the court today Rangers finally announced at 2:50 this afternoon they had appointed Duff and Phelps, aLondonbased finance company, to act as administrator.

Rather than take the time they wanted to re-structure their business the HMRC have forced the hand of Rangers, and this means Duff and Phelps will take over the running of the club while looking to reduce the debt burden at Ibrox.

It will be interesting to see what chain of events this kicks off. Any other club, and indeed any other business, who enters administration will ultimately see people made redundant.

While some are saying it is wrong to speculate about people’s future but sadly I think it will be inevitable. It happened at Motherwell, Dundee, Livingston andGretna, where players were made redundant.

Rangers will be deducted ten points and move 14 points behind Celtic and only nine ahead of Motherwell in third. This has big implications for Rangers, as they need to get their financial position in order ahead of UEFA’s 31^st March deadline for a licence for next year.

While Rangers won’t go out of business it will prove difficult to get back to the power of strength they have experienced in the past. That is unless there are white knights out there waiting to pounce when, and if, the club is debt free.