Craig Whyte continues to amaze us.

The former Rangers owner is said to be so disreputable and discredited – cited as such in more than one court in the land – that his status is supposed to be in dust.

Yet Whyte has not proved so lame and powerless that he has been unable to remove Charles Green from his post.

That is the essence of the latest tortured saga to engulf Rangers. Even the club itself said so yesterday. Green is stepping down due to "the negative publicity" that has gripped Rangers in recent weeks and, in particular, has left this gritty Yorkshireman on the ropes.

This is corporate speak for saying that Craig Whyte has done Charles Green in.

Green can have little complaint. Due to his underhand tactics and then his wild, uncontrollable utterances, he had left himself a hostage to fortune.

Time and again he made colourful, brazen claims that were often a mere tangent of the truth, and many watching this character's antics came to increasingly doubt his reliability as a witness to events.

But Green could have lived with all that. So what, some felt, if he was prone to the odd exaggeration? Some of the great potentates of British club football have cranked up the hype in such a fashion.

But what Green couldn't survive, ultimately, were his connections to Whyte, which he had repeatedly denied, and which Whyte has taken great glee in exposing.

In recent times, in particular, the dialogue and financial transactions linking the two men back in the spring of last year became too significant for Green to remain credible.

His repeated insistence on there being clear blue water between him and Whyte has gradually unravelled before his eyes – at Whyte's behest.

Green could never quite explain away the separate payments of £25,000 and £137,000 by Whyte into bank accounts being connected to either Green or Imran Ahmad, let alone, in the context of Sevco 5088, Green's now infamous utterance on tape that "you [Whyte] are Sevco . . . that's what we are saying."

At the very least, these recent revelations looked dodgy in the context of Green. At worst, they made him look like an unreliable shyster.

Since last weekend, when the Rangers board decided to employ a team of forensic accountants to investigate these Green-Whyte shenanigans, Green has been limping along as a decidedly hamstrung Rangers CEO.

I mean, what kind of chief executive is not taken at his word – as Green quite clearly has not been by Rangers – yet is left in office? It was a hopeless situation, a burning building from which Green has chosen to jump.

Green has been consumed by his own bonfire. He set the entire conflagration up in the first place. In his very first sessions before the media and Rangers fans he made "telling the truth" a cornerstone of his activity at Ibrox.

It was a dangerous plinth upon which to place himself, not least with a disgruntled character like Whyte lurking in the background, and with "stuff" on him.

Then, on top of this, came Green's disastrous interview, in which he proudly painted himself as a kind of latter-day Alf Garnett with his (unintending) racist language. In some circles today that piece of idiocy alone would have been deemed a sacking offence.

For me, having said all of this, it is too early to know how history will remember Charles Green at Rangers. Green did some good at Rangers. He stepped up to a hot plate when others trembled in the liquidation process.

He got money together – albeit via his still mysterious consortium – and hauled the new Rangers back on to its feet. His flotation of the club, which appears to have raked in around £22m, was a reasonable success in hurried circumstances.

The issue of Green's alleged "wrongdoing" remains unsubstantiated. I await to see, maybe in five years' time, how more clear we are on some of this. But in the here and now, the doubts and suspicions were accumulating. And on the key question of trust, Green simply could not survive.

The fact is that the current Rangers board felt they could no longer instinctively trust Green – otherwise they would have ignored the need for an independent inquiry and simply continued to go with him.

Green's trust and transparency had become fatally questioned by those around him. So what chance Rangers on the wider stage when their boardroom was so stricken?

Walter Smith remains a key figure in the club's future direction. Suggestions that the former manager should become the new Rangers chief executive are ludicrous, but what Smith does have is an impressive reputation for fairness, judgment, and a sure touch on the club's pulse.

Smith made the decision seven months ago to endorse Green and, while he might now regret doing that, Rangers should be glad that he is around. Not least, he is a ballast for Ally McCoist, the players and the coaching staff.

More will surely come out about Charles Green's activities in the days and weeks ahead.

But, right now, he is done for.