Rangers probably don’t realise it yet.
And, granted, Saturday’s abject performance and awful result at home to Hibs certainly won’t make the truth of the matter any more obvious or easy to recognise.
But – and you’ll just have to trust me on this one – they have exactly the right man for the job in Barry Ferguson even if they can’t quite see it for themselves at this low point in the caretaker manager’s short stint at the helm.
Yes, Ferguson and his backroom staff are the right men in the right place and at the right time. They’ve just got the wrong team, inherited as it has been from a man who had no grasp at all on the rudimentary requirements of his role.
Philippe Clement may be long gone now but his legacy lives on in the shape of a first team squad which is not even remotely close to being fit for purpose. The reality is, the Belgian Baldrick is the man to blame for the shambling state that Rangers find themselves in.
Ferguson, Neil McCann, Billy Dodds and Allan McGregor are merely attempting to repair some of the damage done during his amateurish, error ridden 18 months in charge.
But it’s proving harder than even they might have imagined even though they went into this suicidal mission with their eyes wide open when they were first asked to answer the crisis call from the club that means so very much to each of them.
The pain was etched all over Ferguson’s screwed up features on Saturday as he watched the latest in a string of feeble efforts from a group of players who simply cannot be trusted to perform like professionals.
He may very well have been left with cause to wonder over the weekend if any of them were feeling even half of his hurt.
And that’s precisely why it might be a mistake for Rangers – and their incoming new American owners – to look elsewhere when it comes to deciding who ought to be leading from the front when next season begins.
This is not time for another rebuild or even a star spangled revolution. It’s gone too far for that.
No, what’s required at Rangers right now is an out and out restoration job. And, in order to restore, first there must be a fundamental realisation of what the club was supposed to look like in the first case.
Yes, Ferguson may lack managerial experience but what he knows better than almost anyone else are the standards required to make this club competitive and capable of offering up a credible challenge to Celtic’s domestic dominance.
He and his men may have arrived in this position just in time for rock bottom but, even so, they understand precisely what will be required in order for this club to start digging its way out the hole it has fallen into.
Unlike the chancers and wage thieves they have at their disposal, they know what a successful Rangers should look and feel like.
And that wealth of priceless knowledge should not be ignored or undervalued by Andrew Cavenagh when it comes to throwing out the bathwater in the summer.
Yes, Rangers need yet another reset and overhaul before the start of the next campaign. But, this time, it should be overseen by those who have a clear idea of what they are actually trying to achieve. People who have lived and breathed it almost all of their lives.
People like Ferguson, McCann, Dodds and McGregor.
Of course, it seems almost absurd to reach such a conclusion on the back of yet another inept performance and woeful defeat.
Never in the history of this club have Rangers lost five games on the bounce at Ibrox and Ferguson and his staff are responsible for three of them. They’ll be mortified at having such a stain against their names.
They’ll also be thoroughly embarrassed by the fact that the team they have been sending out has now shipped 14 goals over the course of their seven games in charge and has made a habit of conceding two at a time without reply.
They’re smart enough to know that it all adds up to a bit of a botched job in terms of their audition for the gig on a more permanent basis.
And yet there’s something steely about Ferguson which suggests he was made for this moment and for the scale of the challenge which confronts him.
Of course, recording a sixth successive home loss on Thursday night might finish him off for good as a candidate for the position in the eyes of many.
And Cavenagh and his backers from the San Francisco 49ers might be there in person again, having pitched up for both legs of the previous round against Fenerbahce.
But if Ferguson can find a way of digging out a result against Athletic Bilbao and if he can carry this team of habitual under achievers towards a place in the semi finals of the Europa League then he’ll have to be taken seriously all over again.
Moreover, he’ll have done it in spite of his players rather than because of them and that will surely not be lost on Cavenagh and his consortium who have seen with their own eyes just how flaky and untrustworthy this side can be.
In order for that to happen, Ferguson and his right hand men are going to have to make some big decisions in their command centre inside Auchenhowie over the next couple of days.
Should they revert to a back five formation or stick with a four?
Can they trust Jack Butland not to throw another one into his own net when the heat is on? Can they squeeze another 90 minutes of Leon Balogun’s ageing limbs at the heart of their defence?
Will they allow Cyriel Dessers to lead the attack again even though the misfiring No.9 looks every inch like the kind of striker who would get any manager the sack?
And, most importantly of all, how exactly do they go about inserting a backbone into such a spineless bunch of performers?
If Ferguson and his right hand men can come up with the right answers to all of the above then perhaps the penny might start to drop and Rangers may begin to realise what they’ve got in their hands.