IT is a work - one of more than a decade in the making and around 100,000 words in length - that could be classed as Brian Howieson's very own Chaos Theory.
The delve into the fall and rise of Rangers was not a labour of football love, as such, for Howieson, a Falkirk supporter and professor at the University of Stirling. Yet his fascination with the devils and the details has resulted in his own interpretation of the most remarkable and controversial events ever to befall Scottish sport and a Scottish institution.
Howieson's expertise does not lie in accountancy or law but a forensic eye has allowed him to painstakingly examine the events that resulted in Rangers facing Brechin City in the first round of the Ramsdens Cup in July 2012. It was a fresh chapter in the Rangers story, but not the first one written by a new club.
Those years from the Third Division onwards were christened as 'The Journey' by supporters and Howieson has been through his own trials and tribulations for quite some time. His book - titled 'Rangers Football Club: 1998 - 2015: A descent into chaos, a resultant chaos, and an emergence from chaos' - may never have been published after DC Thomson withdrew from a deal and put up a wall of silence.
His perseverance has paid off and Howieson will hold a lecture next month that will see him put forward his own hypothesis about how and why Rangers - as a club and a support - were the victims when chaos ensued inside and outside of Ibrox.
"About 20 years ago I met a guy who grew up in Kent and he knew nothing about the Battle of Britain," Howieson told Herald and Times Sport after self-publishing his work ahead of the event in the Logie Lecture Theatre on Thursday, November 10. "But he used to look up at the sky every day and say ‘there was something pretty mega went on up there'. So he wrote a book about the Battle of Britain and it became a best seller.
"There has always been something that has interested me about this so what I have attempted to do is apply a strategy framework to explain it. I have taken the view from the outset that a company operated the club and I have got the various legal sources to support that. I have come to the conclusion that the club were not perpetrators, they were victims.
"There was decline in advance of Craig Whyte by Sir David Murray. I have tried to understand what happened by the companies being bought and sold and the result that had on Rangers Football Club."
The main protagonists in the Rangers tale - Murray, Whyte and Charles Green - are well known to even casual observers but the list of characters, most of whom can be cast as villains, is lengthy and the names and deeds will not be forgotten by a support that suffered through no fault of their own.
Many view the infamous £1 deal that saw Whyte take control at Ibrox as the beginning of the end. Howieson's analysis stretches back far further into the annuls of history, though, as Murray bankrolled the seasons of reckless largesse with Dick Advocaat at the helm and was left in the 'perfect storm' of a global financial crisis, the EBT legal fight and his attempts to keep Murray International Holdings above water.
Howieson is prepared to give Whyte the initial 'benefit of the doubt' but when Ally McCoist's side was eliminated from the Champions League in August 2011, the well ran dry. Within months, Whyte stood on the front steps of Ibrox and confirmed his administration plans.
Sections of society and of every support will tell you that Rangers were killed off by Whyte. Even now, there are some who argue that the Rangers of today is not the one formed in 1872.
"First of all there is the difference between a company and a club," Howieson said as he explained his desire to address three main issues that are integral to the book. "Celtic fans are still fixated on that and think it is the same thing but I have got two quotes from Lord Nimmo Smith and Lord Glennie who are clear that a company operates a club.
"That helped me significantly. The club plays in blue and white at Ibrox Stadium. I am clearly spelling that out.
"There were lots of stakeholders around the club that suffered and the reason they suffered, that they were victims, was because it was corporate Rangers that did the damage. I make that point."
The narrative of the death of Rangers was not only the language of the internet obsessive. The Fourth Estate were accountable at times and Howieson is specific in his terminology to avoid confusion and ensure the facts lead all observers to the truth.
"A lot of the language around this was at times casual and lazy," Howieson said. "When we see ‘Rangers’ are we talking about the football club or the many companies that operated it?
"What we have got to do is help people understand. When people say ‘Rangers’ they think the football club at Ibrox. But there is a Rangers that is a football club and then all these companies.
"If we can be clear on the language, Rangers as a football club did not die, the plc that operated the club went into liquidation and is still in the liquidation process yet. So what did die? Nothing."
Howieson did not set out to judge or to apportion blame. Instead, he endeavours to offer an academic explanation into the complexity of a case that had, and still does have, sporting and societal ramifications.
The introduction of Green into the saga was not the end of it at Ibrox and the court cases and pay-offs, millions of pounds of which have been footed by the taxpayer, ensured the drama continued long after the initial damage inflicted by Murray and Whyte.
Plans for a second book saw Howieson end his first work at the point of regime change in 2015 as supporters finally had heroes to hail. Events of today are still central to his analysis of the past.
"I will go the AGM in a couple of weeks and it is the AGM of the Rangers International Football Club plc," Howieson said. "It is not the AGM of the football club, albeit most people will go along and talk about Giovanni van Bronckhorst and the players.
"I have tried to separate all that out and once I have got that everything flows from that because it is so obvious. The club did nothing wrong, the club was the victim because it was the corporate parents that did the damage."
Like Whyte, Howieson is prepared to give Green some benefit of the doubt as he identifies the 'noise' that surrounded the Yorkshireman as his biggest issue. His view of others is not so forgiving.
Tensions between Ibrox and Hampden reached a crescendo during the spring and summer of 2012 and relations remain strained as supporters choose not to forgive or forget.
"The SFA and SPL could have done a lot more here," Howieson said. "They put the boot into Rangers. They did.
"I would like to think, as a regulator, that they would also learn lessons about how to help a football club in distress through no fault of its own.
"It was the parent company that did the damage but they put the boot into Rangers and that was unfair on the football club."
A 22-year career with the Royal Air Force and Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons was the precursor to Howieson moving into academia and his work on the Rangers story follows a growing interest in leadership in financial and football circles.
He has partnered with the SFA and the School of Sport at the University of Stirling and believes the events at Ibrox should serve as a reminder to supporters at all levels to question the running of their club and the money men behind it.
"The message to fans of all clubs is that you should be aware of and interrogate what the corporate parent is doing," Howieson said. "I don’t think up until about 2009 Rangers fans were aware MIH owed £1billion to the bank. They didn’t.
"Some of them were maybe sceptical or worried but I am not sure they understood how exposed the football club was to this.
"I would say going forward, in general, that all football fans should be very aware of who is running their club, for what reason and what the books say. We have seen it with clubs in England.
"Fans of all clubs should be clear who owns them so I think there are lessons in this regarding the corporate parent and the football club. I am not a finance guy or an accountant but the lessons to learn are very clear."
