RANGERS players were today warned not to use Ally McCoist's decision to quit as manager as an excuse for failing to achieve success this season.

McCoist stunned the whole of Scottish football last week when he served notice of his intention to leave the stricken Ibrox club.

Confusion remains over whether he will work on for the next 12 months or instead receive a £400,000 pay off now.

But his future is set to be thrashed out at a meeting with the board and their respective legal representatives on Wednesday.

It is not the first time a Rangers manager has announced he will quit midway through a campaign - Walter Smith did it in his first spell in charge.

Smith memorably made it public that he would depart at the end of the 1997/98 season just four months into that term.

His star-studded Gers side, of which McCoist was a key member, went on to finish the season without a trophy and just failed to complete Ten-In-A-Row.

Many Rangers fans felt the manager's early announcement that he was going to stand down had an adverse effect on the players.

But Ian Ferguson, one of only three players to be involved in every one of the Nine-In-A-Row seasons, reckons it made no difference at all.

And the Gers great has told the current crop of players it should not prevent them from pursuing silverware in league and cup competitions.

He said: "I don't think Walter announcing that he was going to go affected me in a playing capacity in the 1997/98 season.

"There was definitely sadness that he wanted to go after all those years. But that was a personal thing.

"As a player, I knew I still had to go in to training and do well to get a game.

"So Walter saying he was going to move on didn't make any difference.

"I would never use the manager saying he was going to go as an excuse for failing to win anything and the players at Rangers just now shouldn't either.

"It didn't take my mind off trying to win trophies at all. I still worked as hard as I always had and tried my hardest in matches."

Ferguson continued: "As far as I was concerned, and still am, Rangers was one of the biggest clubs in Britain.

"It was an honour to play for them. If you can't get motivated playing for Rangers you shouldn't be there.

"There is an enormous amount of pressure on you when you are a player at Rangers - to win every game.

"The most important thing when you are a player at Rangers is to have a strong mentality and be able to deal with that.

"I didn't realise it when I joined Rangers as a young player, but you soon find out. Outwith Celtic, there is no other club in Scotland where the pressure is so great.

"When you lose two or three games it gets treated like the end of the world.

"You have to learn how to deal with that and prevent that happening very quickly."

Ferguson moved to Australia towards the end of his playing career to play for Northern Spirit and Central Coast Mariners and has remained there ever since.

He went into management and after spells in charge at North Queensland Fury and Perth Glory he is now Director of Football at Northern Fury.

But the 47-year-old still keeps in touch with what is happening at Rangers - online and speaking to friends and family back in Scotland.

He feels McCoist has had his work cut out in the last few years and has been upset to hear about the difficulties his old team-mate has been experiencing.

Ferguson said: "After winning games and dealing with pressure, the biggest challenge at Rangers was keeping a place in the team.

"We had a lot of quality players fighting for places when I was there and that kept you hungry. We had the likes of Paul Gascoigne and Brian Laudrup.

"But Rangers haven't had that for a long, long time now. It is some time since the manager has had money to spend to entice top quality players.

"Coisty certainly hasn't had the luxury his predecessors had. He has had to rely on kids and Bosman signings to build a team and that is just not the same.

"But there is still the same expectation on his team to win everything. It has been hard.

"It has been the first time in the history of Rangers that any manager has had to go through a period like this.

"Coisty has had to deal with administration and liquidation - he should have been concentrating solely on coaching the team.

"The board don't seem to have given him the backing that he has needed.

"If you are working with people who are putting a dagger in your back it is not easy."

Ferguson, though, believes the current Rangers team can still challenge for the SPFL Championship title as well as the League Cup and the Scottish Cup.

He said: "The players have to handle the stick they are getting.

If you worried about what people said you would end up grey-haired.

"You have to be mentally strong at Ibrox. I got a lot of stick off Rangers fans over the years.

"They all wanted to be where I was.

"But I always felt very fortunate and very proud to be in the position I was in and so should the players who are at Rangers at the moment."