Any Rangers supporter going to Ibrox tomorrow evening for the club’s decisive Champions League group-stage tie might cast an envious eye at Lyons, an exemplary case in European football of a club restored to success. Alain Perrin’s side have somehow survived patchy form to have a chance of reaching the Champions League’s last 16, yet for the Lyons supporters, unlike those of Rangers or Celtic, nothing less is expected of their club.

Today Lyons are viewed as powerhouses of French football, and yet, to put that in context, the club won nothing in almost 30 years between their 1973 French Cup win and landing the French League Cup in 2001. In that time, moreover, a whole succession of coaches at Stade Gerland – Denis Papas, Marcel Le Borgne, Jean Tigana and Raymond Domenech among them - endured nothing but hardship in the job. Into this non-event of a club, though, stepped a figure who would rip up the Lyons story and start again.

Just like Rangers, every club desires a sugar daddy of some form, and in Jean-Michel Aulas, Lyons have one of the most effective in Europe. Aulas, the club’s president, is singularly responsible for the turnaround in Lyons’ fortunes from a peripheral, largely irrelevant club to the aristocrats they are today.

Aulas, a bit like Sir David Murray, the Rangers chairman, has spent his life building up a business empire, in his case consisting of computer services and software manufacturers which today are represented in Cegid, the French giant. Back in 1987, on top of his business passion, Aulas couldn’t wait to get his hands on humdrum Olympique Lyonnais. He could see the potential of the club and the natural strength of their fan base, and he set about making Lyons one of the best-run clubs in Europe. In truth, Aulas achieved this through shrewd and calculating decisions, as much as by injecting money.

One French football writer last week described Aulas as “Cartesian” – a strange word to use in football, but in Aulas’ case, an appropriate one. Football, by definition, is random, yet Aulas, the son of a maths teacher and with his background in computer software, wanted to eliminate chance as much as possible while turning Lyons into a great club. Thanks to Aulas’s strategy, the club hahave won six successive French titles and have come to expect victory and progress at places such as Ibrox tomorrow evening as almost a divine right. A key move at any club is the appointment of the coach, and Aulas hasn’t just been calculating at Lyons, but has also been radical and innovative. For instance, Jacques Santini, who won Lyons’ first title of the modern era in 2002, had been a young coach at Sochaux, doing well but hardly spectacularly, when Aulas decided he was to be his man. Santini duly delivered the breakthrough Ligue 1 title for Aulas before leaving Lyons to become the France coach.

When Santini left, Aulas struck again. Paul Le Guen, like Santini, had done well in his first coaching job at Rennes, but Le Guen had fallen out with the club and left under something of a cloud. In 2002 the French media were by no means convinced that Le Guen was the man to succeed Santini, but Aulas was, and he would be spectacularly vindicated.

Le Guen became the catalyst of the modern, successful Lyons, winning three successive titles between 2002 and 2005 before mysteriously (and characteristically) walking away from the club. The night before Le Guen resigned in May 2005, Aulas begged him to sign a new three-year contract, but the offer was refused. Even so, Lyons’ success under Gerard Houllier would remain remorseless.

Yet Aulas also knew that having a successful coach is only half the battle in football. A modern club, he decreed, needs a thinker, a strategist who lives beyond the bootroom – and preferably someone who is well remunerated and will be in place for the long term. Thus, many believe that Aulas’ best signing at Stade Gerland was Bernard Lacombe.

Once a prolific striker at club and international level, Lacombe was the Lyons coach when Aulas announced that he would become the club’s sporting director. It was a move that, as much as anything, would trigger Lyons’ success in the new millennium.

Lacombe – not Santini or Le Guen – became responsible for the recruitment of players who would transform Lyons’ fortunes on the pitch. In particular, Lacombe mined the South American market and was the prime mover behind a glut of players – such as Juninho, Fred, Edmilson Gomes and Cris – arriving at the club.

Today, after 12 years at the club, Lacombe goes by the title of “special adviser” to Aulas and his influence should not be underestimated. It is said that, if Lacombe doesn’t much care for a particular Lyons coach or backroom member, that person will not last long at Stade Gerland. Nonetheless, in creating Lacombe’s position and placing his faith and trust in him, Aulas discovered the key to Lyons’ success.

For a club which, before 2001, had not much silverware to boast of save for some Ligue 2 titles, it has been a remarkable story of sustained success. The traditional powerhouses of French football – Marseilles, Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain –have been reduced to the role of humble supplicants as Lyons have marched on. Hardly surprisingly, they sit top of Ligue 1 again, despite a strange 1-0 defeat by Caen at the weekend.

If Rangers get their required point tomorrow evening at Ibrox, they will have evicted not just a fine French team, but a sporting institution from the Champions League.

With every passing week the credentials of Mark McGhee for the Scotland job become more impressive. Yet the Motherwell manager - if he is truly in the running as seems to be the case - may have a dilemma to resolve.

Having done intermittently well throughout his club managerial career, McGhee is entitled to feel a little hard done by in his current station in life and may feel that it is in club football that he wishes to reestablish himself. If, for instance, Gordon Strachan were to walk away from Celtic tomorrow, McGhee would be one of the hottest candidates for the job. So should he jeopardise such a possibility by taking on Scotland?

One thing is for certain: McGhee has a talent for taking ordinary players and, first, making them better and, secondly, organising them as a team. After last season’s Fir Park flop, for McGhee to have Motherwell third in the Clydesdale Bank Premier League seems little short of miraculous.

Someone, somewhere, is going to sign up this man.