Rangers are family at war with bad blood everywhere and street fighter Dave King is back in the brawl - Hugh Keevins

Ally McCoist wasn’t trying to scientifically calculate the depth of Rangers’ difficulties when he spoke about the club’s various predicaments.

He went for the non-scientific, words-of-one-syllable approach when he simply but emphatically declared his old club were “in a state”. And as one who was Ibrox manager when liquidation followed administration, along with subsequent demotion and commotion, Ally’s assessment of the current situation is not to be dismissed lightly.

Likewise, former chairman Dave King’s call for an extraordinary general meeting, to put to the vote who Rangers fans want to lead the club through currently turbulent waters, is not to be overlooked as an irrelevance. This is, to use the only appropriate description, the definition of a family at war. And there’s bad blood everywhere.

King is a street fighter who learned to be combative while, like a large proportion of the Rangers support, being brought up in a Glasgow housing scheme. That’s why the main thrust of his astonishing attack on the current board at Ibrox pressed all their buttons concerning Celtic and the possibility of history being rewritten by them, in terms of trophy winning, in the years to come.

It is a form of language and sentiments expressed that the Gers support understand and readily associate with. And if they suspect there are people presently in positions of influence within Ibrox who don’t have King’s grasp on the club’s priorities then they will want them removed and replaced by the man who first swept to power by expressing fears about Celtic winning 10-in-a-row.

King has his finger on the pulse, even while living on another continent. It’s enough for him to assert in his outburst that the club’s true owners are the