Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing I love more of an evening, when the kids have finally collapsed and I’ve made it back downstairs to sit down, than kicking back with a glass of red to watch one of the titans of the Premiership get humiliated in Europe.

I adore watching football on telly. This may be because I could never play that well myself. My late father turned up to watch me in the school 4ths, aged 11, and remarked afterwards that I was the first midfielder he’d ever seen who jumped up to head a ball when it was a full forty feet away. The reason it’s so compelling is it remains one of the few genuinely dramatic things on the box. (One is never entirely sure, these days,  if the result of the latest one day cricket international has been pre-ordained by a betting syndicate in Doha or Lahore.)

With football you genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen next. Who will be the next oaf to mouth a racially abusive epithet? Can that forward get into the penalty area before hitting the deck, writhing in agony, as if felled by a volley of fire from a Gatling gun?

Football is the real drama deal unlike the host of lousy reality/property nonsense on Channel 4 with its faux jeopardy. Will Ken and Tina, the hopeful couple on  ‘Location Location Location’ have their offer accepted on their wow-factored, pebble-dashed dream home in Surbiton?   Who gives a monkey’s?

It’s great to watch but something is very rotten in the state of British football.  You don’t have to have followed the wretched tale of how Harry Redknapp conducted his business affairs to get a strong sense that football does not appear to adhere to the same rules of business as the rest of us.

Now the “proud” Ibrox club, Glasgow Rangers, has entered administration on Tuesday after HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) pursued legal action at the Court of Session in Edinburgh over alleged unpaid VAT and PAYE totalling about £9m. Maddened, spit-flecked fans threatened to lynch the owners. ( It’s only a game, boys. Possibly the most moronic quote ever to emanate from football was Shankley’s pious  ‘Football isn’t a matter of life and death – it’s far more important than that.’ Sorry, Bill. It isn’t and wasn’t. It’s entertainment. Ken Dodd on grass over 90 minutes.)

Now the heat is on. The  Treasury’s coffers are near bare. The party is over. HMRC is getting nasty and is quite willing to force more of these  clubs into administration. Quite right. When I think about the unholy stink made about Stephen Hester’s £1 million bonus then I consider that hideous mess into which Glasgow Rangers descended this week, I do wonder.

However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Rangers are also awaiting the outcome of a tax tribunal over a disputed bill, plus penalties, totalling £49m. Club chairman Craig Whyte, who took control of the club from Sir David Murray in May of last year, has said this potential liability to HMRC could reach up to £75m if the club lost the tribunal. How have they been allowed to get away with this?

What appears clear is that a good number of clubs in recent years have used an emotional blackmail on the revenue – that they were so vital to the fabric of their local communities that they needed to be excused actually handing over the income tax and national insurance from their players’ massive pay packets. All pretty stinky.

The question is now – has Rangers put contagion into the air? AT  Kearney is putting the boot in with some very worrying predictions. ‘In 2010, we warned of the similarities between football and banking asking whether football was too popular to fail. The financial woes of Rangers seem to confirm they mirror in many ways. The question is now: is Rangers the Lehman Brothers of football?’ Harry Redknapp as Dick Fauld. I wonder if the latter claims he was hindered in his business dealings by having a reading age of a two year old.

In both football and banking, managers have lost the power to manage. The talent argument has been used to enable the lunatics – in this case the rain-making bankers and players on £175,000 per week – to take over the asylum. The bosses are held to ransom – ‘reward me with unimaginable amounts of money or I walk.’ This is an unsustainable way to carry on.