While McCoist is clearly no longer Rangers manager, he is still expected to manage Rangers, a situation that is taking its toll on the Scot.

“Ally’s not happy, but he’s also not unhappy,” an anonymous friend of McCoist’s told FourFourTwo.

“He keeps saying that it’s his dream to manage the club he loves, but, on the other hand, he’s dreaming of a time when he doesn’t have to manage the club he loves.

“In some ways his life looks exactly the same as it did when he was managing Rangers, but make no mistake he’s not managing Rangers. Except that I suppose he is.”

McCoist had planned to take some time off after leaving the club to see friends and family. He has insisted that he will still do that, but he’ll do so while standing on the sidelines of Scottish grounds being abused by several thousand people.

“Ally’s asked a few of us if we want to go to see a film with him,” McCoist’s friend continued. “We all agreed until he said that we’d be watching it on a laptop while perched in the dugout at Easter Road.

“I hate to be the one to tell him, but I seriously doubt he’ll get the chance to trek around Vietnam next January either on account of all the management of Rangers he’s doing.”

McCoist has reportedly confided in friends that he fears he may have died and is being forced to live some kind of Dantean contrapasso – a theory he espoused after reading much of the Divine Comedy while managing his former side Rangers against Queen of the South.

NEWS Manager McCoist tenders Rangers resignation