Well, I've checked the papers, scanned the internet and spoken extensively to my lawyer: It's official - Rangers are definitely out of Europe.

Amidst more post-mortems than the DVD box set of CSI Miami, there's only one conclusion on which all the blue-hearted coroners can agree: The patient is definitely dead.

And when he was so very much alive so very recently, questions have to be asked. Seen in all the major towns and cities of Europe throughout last season - dead after a trip to a Baltic State backwater in his first outing this season.

Rangers’ European dream died in highly suspicious circumstances. Why it happened, how it could have been avoided, who is to blame, who ISN'T to blame, how they should be punished, how we should proceed, who should walk, who should stay, who should be brought in?

This is just a test tube sample of the billion questions being debated by the Beardom County Justice Department in the wake of the (pure) murder in Kaunas town.

The season would seem to be over before it's even started. Yet when so many Rangers fans think European competition is a distraction from the real ambition of beating Celtic four times a season and winning the world-renowned SPL title, this is patently not the case.

However, it's fair to say I will feel like an amputee for the best part of the 2008/2009 season.  Every European mid-week, every Friday lunch-time UEFA draw from Lyon or Monaco, I'll reach to scratch a phantom itch on a key part of my make-up which just isn't there any more.

Everyone's looking backwards and forwards for the most volatile or hard-hitting answers. Everyone wants to find reasons as deep as the disappointment experienced on Tuesday. This causes a lot of us to miss the mark in our conclusions. I'm no different in at least one of those respects.
 
My hair-brain tuppence-worth sees me blaming myself and the rest of the Rangers fans, for behaving like spoiled brats so often or failing to drown out the spoiled-brat voices so often that it's impossible for the club to have any depth of infrastructure.

This is not a case of me putting the jerk back into knee-jerk, because it's how I felt BEFORE Tuesday and it's how I felt before Walter Smith even arrived for his second stint.

We have better players than Kaunas - we had them on that rain-soaked Lithuanian turf this week. But our players were being sucked into a vortex of collapsing foundations.

We've had four different managers in eight years. Scottish teams don't get to European finals that much these decades. When they do they usually have a longish-term, fully-supported guru at the helm.

Last season, in other words, was a phenomenal achievement with absolutely no realistic basis. Everything last season was so bravely committed, so over-reaching that the moment we stopped going forward we were always going to shoot wildly backwards like some over-elasticated bungee jumper.

Walter was asked to steady the ship in the wake of Paul Le Guen's seven-month stint. He hit the ground running and massively over-achieved, did Walter. Had this European exit happened 12 months previously, when the emphasis was on running Celtic a lot closer domestically, we would have huffed and puffed but blamed most of it on a departed Frenchman and waited for the next derby.

No-one ever wanted Walter back for European success - because PLG was undefeated and making huge advances in that arena. It was all about local issues. So, now we have nothing but local issues to occupy us I don't think we can complain too much.

Basically, I feel the chairman, Sir David Murray, has tried so hard to give us what we want that, in following every demand of the Loudmouth Loyal, he's been unable to set any real long-term plan in motion at any point during the last eight years.

If anything, he's trying to give the Accountancy Loyal their way and keep the club on an even enough keel for him to sell to a decent buyer and clear off. Never mind the ingratitude, he must be utterly pig sick of the abuse.

Sir David is simply trying to balance the books AND put an attractive sheen on the angle we show in the shop window.  After the outcry that led to the departure of Paul Le Guen he gave up building for the future. All "The Murray Mint" does now is throw patch-up solutions at the dissenters.

This stops the Edmiston Drive main door demos but destroys any chance of creating a managerial, coaching or player dynasty. Rangers are flying by the seat of our pants in the 21st century. So if we exceed on-field expectations one season, we're almost bound to massively under-achieve the following.

What we need is calm. So often in the Ibrox stands we've reacted to non-crises with hysterical bloodlust. That got us to a European final last season but, now that we've been punted so abruptly this season, everyone in Red, White and Blue seems to have forgotten the 2007/2008 UEFA Cup ever happened.

Perhaps, in going so quickly from one extreme to the other on the field we can realise that off the field it's time to find some balance and equilibrium.

For once in our lives, Rangers support should try some perspective and patience.  The worst it could get us this season is a domestic treble - that's no mean consolation for what will be, come May 2009, a long-forgotten European exit.