A great place to be when you are winning but a difficult one to be when you are not. Few understand that situation at Rangers better than Dave King.

Over the last year, John Bennett has lived through that same scenario. On Saturday afternoon, Bennett stepped aside as Rangers chairman. His support for the club – both in a financial sense and a football one – has been unwavering and will continue to be going forward. For the good of himself and his family, Bennett will no longer lead the Ibrox board. In the eyes of some, that is for the best as well.

The confirmation was greeted with a range of emotions for King. He has questioned decisions that Bennett made as chairman during his tenure after he succeeded Douglas Park to lead the club he has followed since his childhood. King will not, though, query Bennett the man or the fan. He provided Bennett with public backing and private support and believes the right decision has been made.

“I'm sad it's come to this, but I have mixed feelings,” King said. “I've got, at a very personal base, a sense of relief because in speaking to John, who I've been in fairly regular contact with over the last couple of months, more not to talk about Rangers details behind the scenes because I'm not on the board and I'm not entitled to information. So we never went that far.

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“But certainly in terms of talking as a support about what we think is going on with the team, which one always does, whether one's on the board or not, we've chatted about that. But mostly just saying to John ‘I understand’ and trying to offer him personal support because I know what he's going through. 

“Being chairman of Rangers is an incredibly difficult task. I've sat on many boards, many public company boards, a lot bigger than Rangers, and it's just a different thing completely.

“It's not just about governance, it's not just about the things that a non-exec board member would expect to find at a club. So I think John was going through, quite frankly, the legacy that he picked up from Douglas. 

“Because I think when John came in and took over as chairman, I don't think he expected to find what he saw and to have to deal with what he had to deal with in terms of the lack of operational support, the extent to which the club had been hollowed out, quite frankly. 

“There was no management support, there was no operational support. So I think John went into that situation because on a personal basis, he loves the club, you can't doubt that for a moment.”

King was the figure for fans to rally around and get behind during the boardroom battle that resulted in regime change in 2015. One of the men who stood with him on that momentous afternoon is now interim chairman after John Gilligan answered a call of duty and returned to the club.

Bennett was with King for several years and it was a sense of duty that saw him succeed Park last year. His expense in cash terms stands at more than £20million to date and he is committed to helping financially at Ibrox once he overcomes his personal challenges at home.

His overall contribution is more significant and more profound and even those who have been vocal critics of Bennett should recognise that. King certainly does.

“He's invested very, very heavily into the club, I think way beyond his original intentions,” King said. “So I had a huge amount of empathy for what he was going through on a personal basis. 

“I know it was affecting his health and I understand that because the pressure is enormous and it does get to, it doesn't stay in your mind, it does translate to your body, that's just the reality of it.

“So I was constantly saying to John, ‘John just be careful because you're not well and you've got to look after your health and your family as well’. The club is the club. So I think he's got it right because I think it does get to a point where, I think the current situation is really not fixable. 

“It's not as if one can sit there and say ‘Well okay I'm going to tough it out, there is a plan and there is a way forward’. At this moment I don't think there is a way forward. 

“So I think for John in his own personal interest to leave now, given he has been incapacitated with his health, in terms of having the energy, having the health to do what's got to be done, it was right that he steps down. 

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“And I'm pleased on a personal basis for him and his family that he's done that. I think it also protects his legacy because I think John's legacy is a good legacy. 

“He came into the club at my invitation initially, he invested, he's been a passionate Rangers supporter, he was a great supporter to me during my time on the board when tough decisions had to be made.”

Those years that King served as chairman were the most tumultuous in the history of Rangers. Almost a decade on, supporters once again find themselves asking questions of those who lead the club. Their intentions are not in doubt, but their worthiness to hold office is under scrutiny.

No issue piled more pressure on Bennett than the saga surrounding the Copland Stand redevelopment. Rangers will be back home when they host Dundee this weekend but the damage, in more ways than one, has been done.

“I find it astonishing, I mean on a scale of one to a hundred I'm going to zero, that we could possibly have started a project if we did not have all of the equipment,” King said. “Just from a management point of view, I don't care if you're managing a Kentucky Fried Chicken or a fish and chip shop or you're managing British Petroleum, there are certain management principles in place. We should never have started the renovations. 

“The management from the board to the operations manager and there should have been supervision of this, there should be compliance, control environment around it, you don't start a project like that unless, when we finished the first game of last season, mid-May whenever it was at home, within a minute or the next morning that team should have been in.

“Because being at home at Ibrox with our atmosphere, where we are formidable, even against the biggest teams, we are formidable at Ibrox, we needed the Champions League money, we needed to be playing at Ibrox. 

“Hampden Park is soulless. I'm sorry, it's our national stadium, but it's soulless. And if that material wasn't there, the chairman of the board or whoever should have turned around to the support and said we're sorry, it didn't happen, the stuff is not here, we cannot start this project knowing the key steel is still in China. 

“We've scored these own goals, we've got so much wrong and what this club has got to do right now is get back to basics.”

If King has his way, it will be him who is leading Rangers on that path to normality. After successive seasons of changes in the boardroom and the dressing room, the need for stability cannot be underestimated at Ibrox.

The dark days of 2015 will not be repeated and most of the concerns are sporting ones rather than business ones at present. Yet the lessons from those previous trials and tribulations are still relevant and Rangers must learn from their mistakes sooner rather than later.

“On a very general level, I think where we were in rebuilding the club, going back to, as you rightly say ten years ago, we built the club up by a couple of things and they weren't clever things, they were actually very, very obvious things,” King said. “The first thing is to admit to your supporters, it's not really about the board, it's not about investors, it's about your supporters. 

Dave King is open to a return as Rangers chairman (Image: SNS)

“I don't want platitudes, I think the board more recently have put out too many platitudes, there's been TV interviews on RangersTV and I've watched some of them, in fact, I couldn't get to the end of most of them because they were just platitudes. 

“You need to be honest with supporters and say this is what we've done, as you say, I've opened the cupboard, this is what we've found, it's not good but this is what it is. But this is what we are going to try and do about it and these are the kind of timeframes we think might be possible if things go well and of course things don't go well. 

“We had the situation where the roof was falling off so health and safety took over and you're trying to get this delicate balance between what we all want as supporters, which is the team winning, but you also have to have facilities that are safe for supporters. 

“We ended up with things that went wrong, but every time they went wrong, my view was, and I think any chairman should be the same, just go and tell supporters, say this is what's happening, this is why it's happened, we take the blame for this or this has happened. But just let everyone know what's going on, let them know what the timeframes are, but whatever happens, keep on going forward. If you get knocked backwards, pick yourself up but go forward again.”