WHEN Rangers opened 2012 with a 3-0 win over Motherwell, it seemed their biggest concerns were whether they could hold on to Nikica Jelavic in the January transfer window and close the two-point gap on league leaders Celtic.

Ally McCoist, however, already suspected it was a lot more serious than that.

It would be a further month before the Ibrox club fell into administration on their way to liquidation and a first ever stint in the lower leagues, but already behind the scenes Craig Whyte's tenure was beginning to unravel. It would lead to the most tumultuous year in Rangers' history, one that started with McCoist trying to lead Rangers to the Clydesdale Bank Premier League title and ended with him trying to navigate a path past Queen's Park, Elgin City et al and out of the third division.

With Rangers now likely to achieve that objective at the first attempt – they preside over a 15-point lead ahead of a trip to face Annan Athletic tomorrow – McCoist can afford to look back on 2012 with something of a wry smile. He had been parachuted in to coach the team and, because of circumstances outwith his control, ended up becoming the de facto face of the club, its spokesperson and figurehead in a time of genuine crisis.

The emergence of Charles Green as chief executive, and a more than willing mouthpiece, has allowed McCoist to return to the more prosaic matter of concentrating on the team but he will not forget 2012 in a hurry.

"I wouldn't have it down as the best year of my life, that's for sure," the Rangers manager said with a smile. "But I certainly wouldn't say it was the worst either. There are worse things that can happen. But it has been the most topsy turvy year of my life without a doubt. It's safe to say that what has happened to the club and what has happened to the team has been, at best, bizarre and certainly challenging. We have come through it to a certain degree, which is great, although there are still miles and miles to go. But the year itself? I have not had an opportunity to sit down and look at it again. I will probably look at it month by month and be amazed."

It would be deep into 2012 before the full details of Whyte's inglorious reign became public but McCoist was not all that surprised when the details began to emerge. "It's easy to say so in hindsight. But we always had a feeling all was not well. We didn't know precisely what the problems were but we did know there was trouble brewing."

So much has happened off the field in the past 12 months it is easy to forget this is just McCoist's second season as a manager. Given the circumstances he has had to work under, it is probably still too early to say with any certainty whether he is any good at it. He made a great start to his first campaign before Celtic gradually clawed back a 15-point lead and led by four points by the time Rangers went into administration. And the team's patchy start to life in the alien surrounds of the third division had a rump of supporters wondering whether he was the right man for the job.

McCoist admits he has no idea what the future will hold for him as a manager but felt that results were of secondary concern throughout a turbulent year. "It has been strange because we haven't been judged on what you usually get judged on, and that's results," he said. "It's probably the only year I can remember where results didn't matter. They were completely secondary. So I am looking forward to 2013 and being judged on results."

An off-the-cuff remark made to a TV reporter through the window of his car would end up being one of the most quotable comments of 2012. McCoist insists that his "we don't do walking away" comment in response to a question about him resigning as manager was not pre-rehearsed or meant to be particularly profound but Rangers fans, looking for a chink of light in an increasingly gloomy scenario, clung to his words like a drowning man holding on to a lifejacket.

"It was a throwaway line," he said. "It was never said with any degree of poignancy, I wasn't trying to be profound or anything like that, it was just something that I said out of the car window and I certainly didn't think it would have had the reaction it did. The supporters needed somebody [at that time]. They didn't have a chairman or a chief executive or a board. All they had was the team and myself as manager, that's all they had and they were looking for something.

"It certainly wasn't premeditated, but a lot of them jumped on it. But never, ever once did I think about [walking away] because I just wanted to see it through. I just wanted the club to survive and the people within their club to keep their jobs."