SOCCER ANGLES:The Scottish champions are facing an uncertain future as their financial crisis deepens, writes EMMET MALONE

THE GOOD news for Rangers owner Craig Whyte this week was that he and former wife Kim managed to resolve a dispute over maintenance payments without the need to take their allotted time in a Scottish court. How the 40-year-old multi-millionaire must wish that striking a deal with the taxman was quite so straightforward.

Whyte said this week that the club he bought nine months ago for a pound are entering the “toughest few weeks” in their 140-year history.

Essentially, Rangers are awaiting the outcome of a tribunal that will decide whether or not they really owe the roughly €60 million in taxes, interest and penalties that most observers believe they do.

Whyte claimed when he took on the club and its debts from David Murray last year that he believed there would be no liability but that’s looking a little far-fetched now with most people believing the very best Rangers can hope for is a bill for about €30 million which would not, it seems, be enough to avoid what has been called, somewhat euphemistically, “a solvency event”.

The worst case scenario, and an unlikely one, is that Rangers would actually go out of existence but what seems far more likely is that the club will go into administration, strike a deal to write off a proportion of the debt and then exit it in a more sustainable state.

Things are complicated, though, by the fact that Whyte has securitised a significant proportion of the club’s season ticket revenue for the next four years to raise about €25 million. This, along with the €6.5 million or so received from Everton for the Croatian striker Nikica Jelavic, must, according to Whyte, be ploughed into the club to pay some of the many and varied creditors.

The Scottish champions’ problems have their origins, in more ways than one, back at the start of the last decade. In 2001 alone, Whyte says, the club went from having €25 million in the bank to owing that much, in part because of the massive campaign of spending that had been undertaken by then manager Dick Advocaat. His 30 or so signings in four years cost the Glasgow outfit a net figure of about €60 million without ever delivering the European success that was supposed to follow dominance at home.

Murray, meanwhile, embarked on all ill-fated scheme aimed at minimising the tax that the many expensive foreign stars (Ronald de Boer, Giovanni van Brockhurst and Andrei Kanchelskis among them) would have to pay by channelling money for their “image rights” to them via an “Employee Benefits Trust” which, it turns out, was not best suited to being operated by a football club.

At the height of the scheme more than €10 million was paid into the off-shore accounts out of which the fund operated in just one year.

The amount of tax owed on the payments made from those accounts to players and other officials is what will be confirmed over the coming weeks.

This, of course, was all just part of Murray’s promise to spend £10 for every five spent by cross-city rivals Celtic.

The club’s problems now are compounded by the fact that they are, even after years of cutting back, currently spending roughly €10 for every eight they generate in revenue with the result that there is likely to be a €12 million loss reported in the accounts for last year when they are eventually filed.

All of which will be amusing the Celtic fans who had to endure the various Rangers successes that were funded by this reckless spending spree.

That, of course, is the way it goes in Scotland and, indeed, in most cities or leagues where such irrational rivalries exist.

Still, you’d expect Celtic boss Neil Lennon to have more sense than to say, as he did this week, that neither Celtic nor the SPL need a strong Rangers.

This, after-all, is a league that only three months ago signed a TV deal worth just €19.2 million per season for the next five years, with even that achieved only because almost one in seven of the games to be broadcast live will be between the Old Firm clubs.

The importance of those games, and the wider rivalry between the two clubs, is one reason why Whyte, Rangers officials and the fans will be confident of emerging from whatever financial storm might be about to descend on them.

In a rather roundabout way they have soon-to-be England boss Harry Redknapp to thank for another.

Back in 2008 the now Spurs boss notched up his one and only trophy success, the FA Cup, with Portsmouth but the club never recovered from the spending involved in assembling the team and subsequently went into administration.

When they tried to come out, having agreed to pay 20 pence in the pound on much of its debt, the Inland Revenue went to the High Court to challenge the “football creditors rule” under which the likes of players and other clubs must be paid in full in order for a financially stricken club to return to competition.

The Revenue lost, however, and so Whyte knows that it will almost certainly be possible to write off most of Rangers’ tax bill, however much it ends up coming to, before getting back to business.

Still, even the proportion the Scots are obliged to pay should prove a serious constraint in terms of their ability to challenge Celtic for the next few years – Portsmouth actually seem set to go bust again over the coming weeks in spite of their previous deal.

And with Hearts receiving their by now annual threat of a winding up order from the Revenue a couple of weeks back, the Bhoys might finally have to concede that, after years of seeing bigotry in the work of officials that crossed them, the taxman might just be a taig.

Torres still living in Drogba's shadow

IF FERNANDO Torres is really as unnerved by Didier Drogba as former Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti suggested a couple of weeks back then he'll be lucky to have slept a wink last night ahead his last game, away to Everton this afternoon, before the Ivorian returns from the Africa Cup of Nations where his goals have thus far helped his side reach the final.

Things haven't improved for Torres in the absence of his team- mate but the faith many Chelsea fans retain in him was demonstrated last weekend when broadcaster Johnny Vaughan insisted that the Spaniard would still go on to become "a legend" at Stamford Bridge.

Vaughan, you might feel, is well-placed to comment on such things having made a couple of seriously ropey career moves himself but he does bring to the table the perspective of the longer-suffering Blues fan.

They are likely to remember the likes of Chris Sutton (three goals in 39 games), Claudio Pizarro (two in 32) and, if you go back far enough, then-record signing Robert Fleck (4 in 48).

Torres has already outshone them all and on current form should beat Andriy Shevchenko's tally of 22 goals by the time he's made 200 or so appearances. The Ukrainian might just feel he is entitled to an apology or two from the pundits back in London.