More 'bidders' add twist to Rangers horror story What's that noise in the cellar which the vulnerable woman - alone in the isolated house, naturally - feels bound to investigate? Craig Whyte! When Whyte speaks, his statements are derided. When he is silent, there is the fear that - like Max Cady in Cape Fear - he is hanging on to a tow rope, ready to haul himself back on board the stricken vessel to traumatise the passengers yet again. Nor does it stop with Rangers. St Mirren, it has emerged, were approached in January by Gary Withey - the lawyer appointed by Whyte as Rangers" company secretary last May - who said he was acting on behalf of possible buyers for the Paisley club. Withey asked for the club's financial details in order to carry out due diligence, to be told by the St Mirren chairman, Stewart Gilmour, that there could be no such process without details of the supposed bid. "It stank," Gilmour told The Telegraph. Withey, as readers are well aware, has gone to ground, despite pleas from the Ibrox administrators to fulfil his role as perhaps the only person who can explain the financial transactions carried on at the club during Whyte's reign. Meanwhile, there is a week of guaranteed suspense for Rangers supporters who fear another Gothic twist in their tale of suffering - the chance that Celtic might win the Scottish Premier title at Ibrox next Sunday. The possibility would have been avoided had Rangers beaten Dundee United at Tannadice on Saturday, but their 2-1 defeat left them dependent on Motherwell postponing Celtic's celebrations. Motherwell beat Aberdeen 1-0 at Fir Park but they have to follow that with another victory over Kilmarnock at Rugby Park this Saturday to keep Celtic apart from their prize for at least another week. The twist of the knife for Rangers - and there is always another wrench of the blade these days - was that, having fielded a team of shreds and patches, they had the better of a first half in which they could have put the contest beyond United. "I don't know how we came in at half-time a goal ahead," said Peter Houston, the United manager. Ally McCoist was of like mind. United had only one chance in the whole of the half - a great chance, admittedly, and Keith Watson took it brilliantly - but we should have been ahead by a couple of goals by that stage. The teams had scarcely taken the field for the second instalment when Jon Daly put United 2-0 up and it was left to Sone Aluko - who netted for Rangers with a deflected effort - to play the part of the would-be rescuer who comes on the scene just too late to save the victim. In no other circumstances could an Ibrox manager survive the accumulation of poor results that have brought the side to this pass, but McCoist is the man who is holding Rangers together as the club teeters on the brink of extinction. When did he last go to sleep untroubled by the day's events? "Probably after the birth of my fifth child," was the wry response. It's very difficult to be guided through this by anybody because we've never been through this situation before. Nobody around here has had the experience of what we are all enduring at the moment so we just have to get on with it. Every day we have problems thrown up which we don't expect but there are no other options than to meet them, head-on, meet them together and do our damnedest to get through it. At least we have something a little more positive to think about in that there seem to be three or four potential purchasers coming to the fore. From where I'm standing, the sooner that happens, the better. The one thing that has been lacking for a good number of months now is stability and a plan for the future. Once we get that, we can plan for the future and if that happens - make no mistake about it - we'll be back. As to more immediate possibilities, McCoist evinced mixed feelings about the possible outcomes of this week. "It's strange, all right, because we're faced with Catch 22," he said. We don't want Motherwell to win on Saturday because then they'll go in front of us in the table and we want to finish second. Yes, we'll watch the game and have our thoughts on it, but we can't do anything about that, so the approach that we will take this week is that the Old Firm derby is an opportunity to beat our biggest rivals. As depleted as we are, I refuse to fear the Old Firm game. I never have and I'm not going to start now. McCoist might be alone at Rangers in that respect. Altogether now - in the gravel voice of the guy who does the spook movie trailers: "Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse"