Rangers takeover finally concludes Craig Whyte catastrophe but there is a tinge of sadness too – Keith Jackson

There once was a man from Motherwell whose wealth was off the radar … stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before.

Because the unmitigated catastrophe which was unleashed upon Rangers from the moment Craig Whyte’s pointy, plastic shoes first stepped over the threshold has now come to a conclusion.

Friday’s confirmation of Andrew Cavenagh’s US led takeover has allowed the Ibrox club to emerge from the rubble which Whyte left behind back in 2011 when he tossed a pound coin across Sir David Murray’s desk and set in motion a chain of events which would have near apocalyptic consequences.

Fourteen years later, it’s finally over.

Cavenagh and his backers from the San Francisco 49ers have drawn a line under all of it by snapping up 51 per cent of the club’s shares and taking control from a beleaguered, fractured regime which was doing nothing much more than fighting the fires which were left smouldering behind. And not all that well.

They tried their best and they ought to be thanked for their services, even if time and again they were exposed for being hopelessly out of their depth.

There’s a tinge of sadness in there too.

It was around this time last year, for example, that former chairman John Bennett - a thoroughly decent man and a genuinely honest broker - discovered to his horror that outgoing CEO James Bisgrove had effectively rendered Rangers as homeless before bolting to a new post in the Middle East.

During his time in charge Bennett was chewed up and spat back out by a club he cared so passionately for that he was prepared to pump more than £20million of his own money into it just to keep the wolf from the door.

The collateral damage done to his own reputation and, worse still, to his health and well being was