After days of tense negotiations and various offers from the playing staff to take wage cuts and deferrals, administrators Paul Clark and David Whitehouse took matters into their own hands.

They began the cull to make the £1million a month savings they say are required to keep the club alive.

It is believed five players asked to be released from their contracts immediately – Gregg Wylde and Mervan Celik were two of those confirmed and have now left the club.

But others were awaiting the news their contracts would be ripped up.

Rangers have been in administration for 21 days, but today was set to be one of the most difficult days for players and other staff as Clark and Whitehouse broke the dreaded news about who was to go.

They then started to work their way through the list of departures.

Players who would command substantial transfer fees further down the line, such as Allan McGregor, Steven Davis, Steven Naismith, Lee Wallace, Steven Whittaker, Maurice Edu and Kyle Lafferty, are all understood to have been omitted from the list to be axed.

But with massive savings required, the administrators insisted they had no option but to dramatically cut manager Ally McCoist's playing staff immediately.

Players were having to wait around the club's Murray Park training base before discovering their fate.

Wylde was the first player out the door and revealed he offered to leave without a pay-off to play his own part in trying to save the club.

The 20-year-old said: "I volunteered to walk with no redundancy package today to help the other people in the club who have families, like the kitchen staff.

"I offered to walk away yesterday and the club told me today they would accept that offer.

" At the moment I have nowhere to go and I don't have another club.

"I don't know what is going to happen next, but I thought it was important to play my part in saving Rangers."

Midfielder Lee McCulloch has already offered to play for nothing for the remainder of the season and McCoist is also understood to have forfeited his own wages in an attempt to possibly save the jobs of general staff at Murray Park and Ibrox.

Administrators are expected to make their way to Ibrox Stadium directly from Murray Park later this afternoon to begin the painful process of telling non-playing staff their fate.

The administrators have set a deadline of March 16 for potential buyers to show their interest in taking over the club.

By THOMAS JORDAN