Rangers fans are ready to light up the Bat Signal but you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain

A half-empty stadium, a board at loggerheads with the fans and a team ill-equipped for the fight. Sounds familiar, eh? But we’re not talking the grim here and now with Rangers, rather the climatic end to the club’s former ruling regime.

Next March will mark the 10th anniversary since the rag-tag bunch of hangers on hoisted into power by Mike Ashley were finally booted out. That shift in power came just a month after the club had reached the nadir of their bleak 2014/15 campaign with a Scottish Cup defeat to Raith Rovers in front of just 11,422 fans.

Things quite weren’t that bad this weekend as Philippe Clement’s men edged past St Johnstone in their Premier Sports Cup opener. Ibrox chiefs conveniently forgot to announce the attendance at their temporary accommodation by Mount Florida but it can’t have been more than 20,000. The picture it presented, though, was a seen of deep division with a board they once looked to for hope.

It was Dave King, Douglas Park, John Bennett and their gang of Ibrox investors who rallied to the Bat Signal sent up by the increasingly desperate Light Blues faithful seeking a hero to banish those they accused of holding their club to ransom. The demise of a cast of characters who wouldn’t have looked out of place in a dimly shot Christopher Nolan epic was supposed to end an excruciating period of darkness for the long-suffering Gers support. Their expectation was that they’d soon be basking in the shimmering light of silverware. But the arrival of the new board hasn’t proved to be the game-changer the fans assumed it would be.

Far from enjoying a new dawn, the club is caught in a nightmare they show no sign of waking from. Since ripping control of the club away from Ashley, the current