'Europe papered over cracks, now Rangers require revolution'

In a stadium nicknamed La Catedral, the bells tolled for Barry Ferguson and his Rangers team.

For the manager there was a last blast in Europe, an expression of anger post-match about two penalties he felt Rangers should have had in Bilbao, a plaintive cry on the night their season effectively ended.

Luck was not on their side in Spain. Decisions went against them. Injuries befell them. The blatant lack of quality in their starting line-up and on their bench came back to bite them.

They tried to deal with their own shortcomings one more time, but they couldn't. Athletic wouldn't let them.

Ferguson has emptied himself in this job, but there are not enough hours in his day or days in his week that could fix the problems he inherited. His level best was never going to be good enough.

Not his fault. It's just the way of things when a club makes bad decision after bad decision over the course of several years.

It wasn't so much Ferguson's words about penalties not given that hit home, though. It was his almost resigned tone that stood out in the aftermath.

He gave off a feeling that whatever hope he had of keeping this job after regime change has now gone.

There was a comment about maybe returning to an ambassadorial role, a wistful remark about just wanting "my club to get back to where it should be."

But where should Rangers be? With all their mis-steps, on and off the pitch, the obvious truth is they are exactly where they deserve to be. At least domestically.

In Europe they have over-achieved, but Europe is not their most important testing ground, it's not the place where they must excel and make up ground on their rivals.

Those improvements, vast in scale, are a lot closer to home than Bilbao or Istanbul.

Hibernation season is coming to an end, but how Rangers folk must wish they could curl up and go to sleep until such time as the new owners have poured through the door at Ibrox.

At least they have that to look forward to. A new beginning, they hope.

Before then they have the purgatory of five meaningless league games to endure.

They have another Celtic title win to try to block out and a probable Scottish Cup win by their greatest rivals to avoid. The chances are they'll have to find a way of turning a deaf ear to their enemy's treble yell.

Some of them might sooner go to prison for a short stretch than watch all of this unfold in the coming weeks.

The every thought of Rangers fans now will be about the takeover and what it brings. Nothing else matters. Nothing.

Ferguson understated it when he said that a lot of work needs to be done. It's a mountain. A veritable Everest.

A new management team, a new recruitment infrastructure, and a bunch of new players need to put together. Think Ange Postecoglou's first season at Celtic and you get the picture.

There is little hope of success with a squad of players that have failed so dismally in domestic football, no sense in waiting and hoping for a miracle. Everybody knows the definition of madness.

The challenge, though, is brutal. The prospective new owners are serious people and they'll need to be. Practically every new recruit needs to work.

There can't be another Danilo - £6m spent on a fee, millions more in wages and three more years left on his contract.

There can't be another Oscar Cortes, a lesser-spotted winger of questionable ability, who is at Rangers on loan with what is understood to be a must-buy clause said to be in the region of £3-4m.

There can't be another Nedim Bajrami; another Sam Lammers; another Ben Davies. Around £11m was splurged on those three alone.

For £11m, or less, Celtic brought in Daizen Maeda, Kyogo Furuhashi, Matt O'Riley, Reo Hatate and Alistair Johnston. All major successes and all trophy-laden, with two of them subsequently sold for a combined £35m.

Rangers are only playing around at the foothills of the mountain they must climb.

The financial waste at the club spreads far and wide. Ferguson was powerless to do anything about that. Philippe Clement did as decent a job as anybody could have done in the circumstances, but he fell short, too.

Their European adventures have been extraordinary and freakish, but they only served to paper over the cracks. Revolution is required now.

The optimistic note is that they have, all going well, a new and impressive outfit about to take hold of the place.

From what we know, they are not the kind of soft touches that have roamed around the Ibrox corridors of power for long enough, which is just as well, for setting Rangers on the right course is going to be a herculean pursuit.