The pain of Steven Gerrard’s departure to Aston Villa will sting for a while yet but Rangers has never been a club to stand still and wallow in negativity.

The board will be keen to move on quickly knowing that a successful season is there for the taking and the new manager will have an excellent squad to stave off a renewed challenge from across the city.

The league campaign takes on special significance given the work, largely by Gerrard, to improve Scotland’s coefficient means there is a huge chance the winners qualify directly for the Champions League and the filthy lucre that delivers.

A guaranteed £40m injection would revitalise the finances of a club that just posted losses of £23.5m amid a continuing recovery from the ravages of 2012 and the old, despised regime. That makes this one of the most important seasons in the club’s history.

READ MORE: Steven Gerrard leaves Rangers for Aston Villa: who replaces him at Rangers? - video debate

Win the title and Rangers will be well and truly back in the big time, fail and the road is much less certain with difficult decisions sure to be made.

A new manager stepping into this environment will need a rich and varied skillset to make all the moving parts whirl in synchronicity.

While various media outlets have been abuzz with potential managers it’s safe to say there seems no outstanding and obvious candidate for the fan base to rally behind.

That shouldn’t be an issue with Ross Wilson now firmly part of the fabric of the club. There has been a plan in place for this eventuality that will now spin into action.

It’s a scheme the sporting director wouldn’t have ever wanted to set in motion but one he will have confidence in given his experience at Southampton where he appointed the popular and tactically expansive Ralph Hasenhuttl to great acclaim. While football purists were aware of the Austrian’s sterling work at RB Leipzig, he was largely considered a left-field and progressive appointment. Time has proven it to be an excellent signing.

And this experience of imaginative thinking is just as well as while Scotland has provided a rich seam of coaching talent to the football world over decades, there’s nobody that jumps out as an outstanding candidate for the job on these shores.

Callum Davidson has worked miracles at St Johnstone but has only had a year in the job. Derek McInnes would go down like a lead balloon with a section of the support, not least because of what happened the last time he was offered the opportunity. Robbie Neilson has proven to be a solid Hearts manager but has yet to show he can lift trophies. Neil McCann played good footbal but was volatile and had something of a rollercoaster at Dundee. Outside of that, it’s slim pickings.

Going abroad, Gio Van Bronkhorst knows the club and has real stature in the game. He won three trophies with Feyenoord and led them to the Champions League but would surely be an expensive hire. Rino Gattuso is combustible but has managed huge clubs in AC Milan and Napoli. He was close to the Spurs job and would likely also require big wages although his Scottish wife may enjoy the idea of a return home. Neither though,  has experience of the Scottish game for nearly two decades.

And that’s significant because the importance of this title means a necessity to win it must surely be factored into any appointment. The kind of project manager that would take time to bed in to the Scottish game, a Pedro Caixhina type, is surely for another day.

While the club should always be thinking of the long term, there is little room for manoeuvre in appointing a coach who understands how Scottish football works with teams setting up in the low block and being happy with a draw.

Someone with Scottish or at least British experience who knows the club, the idiosyncrasies of away trips to the Spaghettihad as well as the demands to win every game would be ideal.

Some have suggested a temporary solution, until the end of the season, while the club take time over a longer-term appointment. There are some obvious strengths to this idea given it allows someone to come in and complete the season, which arguably requires a different coaching skillset to arriving fresh.

READ MORE: Rangers statement in full as Steven Gerrard leaves for Aston Villa

Whoever arrives will have to yield a little of their own coaching imprint to what has gone before and accept that any changes will need to be tweaks rather than radical change. The group has been incredibly drilled in the Gerrard/Beale game model and to deviate too readily from that may require substantial tactical deprogramming. It’s a similar job spec to the one faced by Neil Lennon when he took the reins at Celtic from Brendan Rodgers and was expected to steer the ship using the navigational charts of the previous regime.

The problems come when every victory or good performance brings calls for a permanent appointment and a new manager bounce can often skew things in an odd way as Manchester United found when they were forced into appointing Ole Gunnar Solskjaer on the back of his caretaker work.

In truth, it smacks of the kind of option that might have been considered in the days before Gerrard, when the club was run in a less stable manner. With Wilson now in place, the club has a shortlist of high-quality potential candidates it will work through.

Whoever gets it will have to hit the ground running.

With Celtic looking an improving force and with an easier run of fixtures, plus a big January ahead, there’s no doubt the battle for 56 will be significantly more fraught than 55.

For many it will be the job of a lifetime, but a blistering heat of expectation will be on from the start.