It is not easy being a caretaker manager. Generally, you are plunged in at the deep end, when affairs tend to be at their most critical, in the hope you can somehow salvage a shoogly situation.

It is bit like being handed the controls of an airplane when the captain takes to the aisles to tell the passengers that “if you look out over the right wing, you’ll shortly see the flaming remnants of the left wing”.

Graeme Murty has certainly earned his stripes during his temporary spell at the helm of Rangers. There have been headstands, hands on heads and sometimes even hands over the eyes but the quiet, purposeful dignity in which he has gone about his own business – unlike certain others involved at Ibrox – continues to leave him with his head held high.

It’s been quite a journey for the canny 43-year-old and it always helps to be able to draw on the pearls of wisdom of someone who has been through a similar situation. Forget any folk with Rangers connections, though. Murty has been given an encouraging insight from the former Celtic manager, Neil Lennon.

Back in March 2010, Lennon was handed the reigns in the wake of Tony Mowbray’s departure and won the remainder of the club’s leagues games but lost to the then First Division side, Ross County, in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup.

Lennon was finally appointed Celtic’s full-time manager in June and went on to enjoy a fine stint as the boss. Like Lennon, Murty has been put in charge of a vast footballing beast. It is akin to being the custodian of a quiet cattery and then being asked to look after the tigers.

“It’s been an eye opening year, a year of fantastic growth and development for me personally and professionally,” said Murty. “I’m not sure there are many people who have been on the type of journey I have been on.

“But I actually talked to one last Wednesday in the shape of Neil Lennon and he talked of his journey of being a caretaker at a massive, massive club.

“He spoke of the lessons he learned there. The things he talked about are the things that I am going through now. It’s just a question of trying to retain some semblance of sanity and normality for myself.

“I realise I have a different status currently but I’m still the same person who goes home every night and is only third in charge of my own house.”

Family comes first, of course, but the wider football family has ties that bind as well. Despite all the rivalry, the finger-wagging and the verbal volleys that are par for the course in the rough and tumble of the Scottish game, the band of managerial brothers remains strong.

While preferring to keep exactly what Lennon said in the aftermath of Rangers’ narrow 2-1 win over Hibernian to himself, Murty’s sense of gratitude was clear.

“Neil did give me advice,” he said. “He was very open and candid. We had a really good chat and the main bit of advice was to enjoy the wins. Coming from someone who must have been hurting quite a bit [after Hibernian’s defeat] was very big of him. I really appreciated that.”

We are still not sure whether Murty is merely keeping the hot seat warm for someone else or getting to the point where he is quite fancying the prospect of shoving his own pillow into that aforementioned chair and taking up a permanent pew. He is clearly relishing the task at hand but he is certainly not getting carried away by it.

“No, not at all,” he responded when asked if he was getting comfortable in the role. “You are paying me a compliment here. You have to be considered in everything you do. I was very emotional previously as a coach – I even did a headstand once – but I am better at maintaining a sense of perspective now. I have a greater sense of my own place in things and I don’t think that being comfortable is anything that should come with a job description at this football club. You should always be striving to be better than you have been previously.

“It is extremely surreal. I sit here as an under-20s coach going into Christmas in charge of one of the biggest teams in British football. It still brings a smile to my face the fact I have been given this opportunity and have the honour of doing it.

“If I’m honest, I always have the feeling that it’s going to come crashing to a halt at any moment. That is why I’m enjoying it so much.

“You have to go and absorb as much as you possibly can because it informs your own practice so much. No-one is an island.

“You have to be big enough and brave enough to try things that you have seen and then sharp enough to say that didn’t work, I need to change it. Then you have to back yourself.

“I’m trying to take as much as I can from everything that I’m doing as you don’t know when it’s going to stop.”