The Ferguson experiment is over, and the last of the “Real Ranjurs men” roll out of Ibrox.

So last night the news was confirmed, and it came as no surprise.

Barry Ferguson and his management team won’t be hanging around Ibrox; they’ll be leaving with the next bin collection. It was fun while it lasted – mostly for us, and for everyone who enjoys poking fun and laughing at that helpless, shambolic embarrassment of a club.

The board thinks it’s going to name its new boss within the next seven days – or at least, that’s the timescale they’re putting on it. That’s what they’ve told the likes of Keith Jackson and others.

We’ll see whether they actually do.

Hilariously, David Ancelotti is still in the frame. And a report from France suggested they missed out on an option to appoint Will Still as the next head coach.

Still apparently wants a move to England.

He sees it as a much bigger playground. But I’d suggest the Still story is important for more than just that reason. It’s an indicator of what the Ibrox club’s new board of directors is actually looking for in a prospective manager.

And it isn’t someone with a track record of success. It isn’t someone who wants to be an architect. Because the architect managers are the successful ones – the ones who build their own teams.

The Ibrox club is looking for a guy who will let those above him build the team for him. They want someone who’ll work within certain parameters, under strict conditions, and not have much say beyond the coaching and team selection.

The transfer strategy? That’s way above his head. That’ll be decided elsewhere, and he’ll just have to work with the players he’s given.

This is a bit like what Rodgers was belatedly told he’d have to accept at Celtic – only Rodgers had the clout and experience to put his foot down and get his way. That’s why last summer was a lot better. And that’s why Mark Lawwell was very swiftly jettisoned – making it clear who really runs the show.

They don’t want an experienced name who’ll try to assert himself. They’re going to have this guy dangling on strings. He’ll be a little puppet. He won’t be his own man.

Will Still has no coaching experience outside of France, and even during his time at Reims he didn’t have his coaching badges at first – the club had to pay a fine every time he managed a game. They were willing to do that because they believed in him. But he hasn’t exactly been a roaring success.

Still would probably work within a system where the coach just coaches and doesn’t do anything else. Ancelotti, because this would be his first management job, might have to accept that kind of system whether he wants to or not. His father’s name isn’t going to impress people in the way some in Scotland seem to believe it will. We’re very easily impressed here – not so much elsewhere.

You can’t look at candidates like Still and Ancelotti – or even the German at Sheffield Wednesday, who’s apparently getting attention despite a shockingly low win rate and no real experience beyond that – without seeing the common thread.

These are guys who will play the game. They’ll come into a so-called big club and work under whatever conditions they’re handed. So the idea that Ibrox is about to pull a “big name” out of a hat has always been a bit of a fantasy.

The truth is, it’s going to be a project manager. That was evident from the start. This is how the new leadership sees the club – as a little science project. And they’re going to treat it that way. They’ll try to make it run properly.

They’ll aim to put it on a balanced financial footing. They’ll bring in a guy who knows how to work with a low budget and has a reputation for “making players better.”

And if he’s not up to the task, they’ll sack him and bring someone else in.

It won’t necessarily be about whether the club is winning things.

Of course, there’s still that rather large obstacle standing in their way: Celtic. Every one of them will have to work in our shadow anyway.

One thing’s for sure – it won’t be Barry. It won’t be Neil McCann. It won’t be Allan McGregor. It won’t be any of the other weirdos, throwbacks and lunatics.

Sadly, there might not even be a place much longer for John “The Bomber” Brown, who had a meltdown on IbroxTV at the weekend and started accusing people in the SFA of corruption – to the point where even his co-commentators had to tell him to pipe down because, y’know, you can’t say that sort of stuff on air.

So it’s over. This is how it ends.

The last of the big-time spenders and the last of the so-called real Rangers men, rolling out of town. All of them, from boardroom to boot room. Never to return – except maybe as fans, or possibly as part of some future consortium riding to the rescue to save them from the evil Americans.

But for Ferguson, this was never going to have a happy ending.

As I said on the day they beat Celtic at Ibrox – that was the high point of his career. It was never going to get better than that. Everything was downhill from there, whether he got the job or not.

If he did get it, he was destined to fail – just another mounted head in Brendan Rodgers’ game room. If he didn’t, then he’d forever carry the grievance and the grudge, always wondering why he wasn’t considered good enough. I enjoyed the anticipation of that pain. And yesterday, it duly arrived. I’m sure it hurt. I hope it did.

And for the rest of us? Things go on just as they always have – with Celtic winning things, and their club floundering hopelessly, and there is no end in sight.