As assistant to Walter Smith as Rangers equalled Celtic’s record haul of nine consecutive title wins, Archie Knox’s place in the Ibrox club’s history is forever secured. And as someone who has also worked under Sir Alex Ferguson, he knows only too well what it takes to bring success and titles to a club.

Unfortunately, from a Rangers point of view, it is within the dressing room on the other side of the city that Knox sees the requisite qualities to deliver success, and sustained success at that.

Knox believes that even Sir Alex would be unable to catch Celtic with the group of players currently in place at Ibrox, and he sees no end in sight to the champions’ domination.

And if even the greatest manager Scotland has produced would be unable to bridge the current gap between the sides, then with all due respect, what chance does Pedro Caixinha realistically have?

Asked if Govan’s most famous son would struggle if he was in charge of Rangers, Knox said: “Well he would. Unless you have the players and you recruit well then you are not going to do it.

“For Rangers to get back to what they once were then they need to have the same level of player as Celtic. Celtic have better players - it is not rocket science. There is no magic formula - you simply have to have better players who have better attitudes than the rest of the teams and then you have a good chance of winning.

“I don’t see anybody [knocking Celtic off their perch] in the near future. The level of player that Brendan Rodgers is bringing, like Patrick Roberts coming back, and having six players in the Scotland team, is great for Celtic.”

There is little doubt that Knox’s influence over the side during their period of domination in the ‘90s was integral to their success. His scouting missions and recommendations shaped that Rangers team and the club legends who were born from it.

The course of Ibrox history may well have been very different had Knox ignored his hunches, and nowhere more so than when he decided to steer manager Smith towards a certain brother of the player he had been sent to cast his eye over.

If he hadn’t, Brian Laudrup, the man who headed the crucial goal at Tannadice to seal that historic ninth title in-a-row, might never have been a Rangers player.

“I actually went to watch his brother, Michael,” said Knox.

“When I came back I said to Walter; ‘We’ve got people who can play in his position but we don’t have people that can play Brian’s position.’ And that’s how we got him.

“It was the same with Marco Negri. Sven Goran Eriksson was with Parma at the time and I went to watch his training and I told him that I was going to look at Filippo Maniero at Verona. I said, ‘We’re looking for a goalscorer.’

“Eriksson recommended Negri at Perugia and he told me he was better than Maniero. So, we went and got him.

“Negri scored a barrowload by Christmas and it was phenomenal stuff. He was a centre-forward that scored goals and that was it.

“I remember giving him a rollicking at half-time during a game. I said: ‘for f*** sake Marco, when we are attacking you need to run the channels now and again.

“Marco said: ‘Archie have you watched me play? You must know I don’t do this.’ And that was fair enough!”

Knox was speaking as he launched his autobiography, ‘The School of Hard Knox’, and any player who has been under his charge would struggle to describe his style any more fittingly.

It is a retrospective look at his wildly successful spells as number two at Aberdeen, Rangers, Manchester United and Scotland, with Knox proclaiming himself to be the luckiest man in the world to have amassed the memories contained within its pages.

Much may have changed at Ibrox since Knox’s heyday with Rangers, but he says that one thing will always remain. While winning might not be as regular an occurrence these days as it once was, the demand to win – and to do it in style – will forever be the burden of whoever is in the dugout.

“I tell a story about coming out of Ibrox after we beat Hibs 7-0,” he said.

“I always came out with Ally McCoist because whenever he left everybody surrounded him so I could make a quick getaway.

“That day I heard the voice: ‘Hey Knox! Hey Knox! There was a guy running along the road beside me and he was pointing the finger at the park and he screams: ‘That was ridiculous, you allowed the players to take their foot off the pedal, it should have been ten!

“You can’t win. We played Kilmarnock in the first game of the season after nine-in-a-row and a boy appears at the dug-out after 17 minutes - ‘Hey Knox, this is s****!”

“I told him there was a long hard season ahead.”