Walter Smith has been here many times before with Rangers, and the dread doesn’t get any easier with age. In four days’ time Smith’s men face FBK Kaunas on the long road back into Champions League football and, with upwards of £12 million at stake, together with an impassioned support who view playing elite European football at Ibrox as just short of their divine right, the pressure is as intense as ever.

The Lithuanian side represent the first of two qualifying obstacles that Rangers must face over the next three weeks if they are to reach the Champions League group stage. The Rangers manager is blunt and to the point about the task.

“It is a major anxiety for us,” Smith said yesterday. “There is no hiding from it. The financial aspects are enormous and yet the timing of these games is so awkward. But if you have any European aspirations at all, then these are the obstacles that have to be overcome.”

Smith knows the angst of these qualifiers more than most. Back in 1997, during his first, often fraught time in charge of Rangers, his new side back then, patched up to the tune of a £17 million summer spending spree, lost out to IFK Gothenburg in a Champions League qualifying tie. At the time, opprobrium was heaped on the head of Smith who, just by chance, was due to enter hospital that week for a routine operation, thus sparing him much of the media interrogation at his team’s failure.

How often has it been said? Supporters of Rangers and Celtic, in the face of all the current financial evidence in football, view themselves as belonging among Europe’s elite clubs. Such failures on these occasions are not tolerated.

“It is very tough for us,” said Smith. “You don’t even have the benefit of three or four competitive games before you face these matches. And the tough part for us is that, as opposed to 10 or 20 years ago, football today is such a finance-based game, and that makes it harder for us.

“We need to be realistic about it. If you take the Champions League, the fact is that no club from a country of five million people is going to win it. The winners of the Champions League are always going to come from the big countries — that’s a fact.

“I am listening to managers in England who are spending fortunes on transfers and wages and they are still saying: ‘we’re not going to break into the top four.’ That is what is happening in football today. It is a finance-based game, and possibly our supporters won’t accept that, and maybe we’ve got to try to not accept it, either.

“I just think that the Champions League is beyond us and while a Uefa Cup run can be done, it won’t be on a consistent basis but, more realistically, only every now and again.”

For some time now Smith has had a growing conviction that the European structure of the game — where fate is weighted in favour of the big clubs from the rich countries — is damaging to the health of other “big clubs” such as Rangers and Celtic. Only a European league, he believes, in which the Old Firm can participate, can alter that damaging course.

“The way things are, there is always going to be a limit to how far we can go — I’m trying to be realistic about it,” said Smith. “In football, of course, you’ve always got to have a level of optimism. You’ll always hope that you can maybe defy the odds a little bit and have some relative success. There are other aspects of football which we hope can make up for the financial part. But it’s very hard. It’s not a case of giving up on it, but just being realistic. In the last couple of years we’ve seen Celtic getting into the Champions League sections, and Rangers having our Uefa Cup run. So we’ve shown that we still want to compete at that level.”

In truth, Kaunas next week should not frighten a team of Rangers’ standing — that test might be more apparent in the following qualifying Champions League hurdle. The Lithuanian side, though, will prove sufficiently worrying, according to Smith.

“I saw them play against FK Zeta [the Montenegrin side that Rangers defeated in a Champions League qualifier last season] last year and poor finishing cost them dearly,” he said. “They were by far the better side and they play to a good standard. So we know we will have to play well against them to advance.

“Last season at Rangers we just wanted to offer a better challenge, and we succeeded in doing that. Ultimately, there was a huge disappointment for us that we couldn’t take that challenge a bit further, but at least we’ve shown that we can do it. So there’s no reason why we can’t mount as good a challenge — hopefully with a bit more success at the end of it — this time, at least in terms of the title.”

This weekend marks the start of another long, hard, unforgiving slog for Smith.

He almost appears to enjoy it.