Rangers have been warned they are sliding towards liquidation after the bleakest prognoses of their future arrived both from the club's administrators and a current director on Wednesday.

Having failed earlier in the day to agree a crucial and significant pay-cut deal for the squad, the administrators admitted the club may be unable to fulfil their remaining fixtures this season, triggering a desperate plea for new investment.

Duff & Phelps, the Rangers' administrators, threatened that if that was not forthcoming then they would need a significant batch of redundancies just to allow the team to complete this Scottish Premier League campaign.

David Whitehouse, Rangers' joint administrator, said: "We are announcing we are accelerating the sale of Rangers Football Club. The club is in a perilous financial situation and that should not be underestimated. Regrettably, we have been unable to agree cost-cutting measures with the playing staff on terms that will preserve value in the business. We understand the players' position as the scale of wage cuts required to achieve these savings without job losses were very substantial indeed.

"In view of this, we are faced with a situation of making redundancies within the playing staff on such a scale that would materially erode the value of the playing squad. We are striving to strike a balance where cost-cutting measures can be implemented but do not destroy the fabric of the playing squad to the extent that it will inhibit the prospect of a sale.

"However, no one should be in any doubt that in the absence of sufficient cost-cutting measures or receipt of substantial unplanned income, the club will not be able to fulfil its fixtures throughout the remainder of the season."

Paul Clark, Whitehouse's fellow administrator, later confirmed Rangers have "no realistic hope" of being granted the licence which would allow them to compete in European football next season, in what represents a further financial blow. Clark added: "There has, perhaps inevitably, been speculation about Rangers Football Club facing liquidation. As we have stated previously, we remain very confident that Rangers will not cease to exist and the team will continue to play at Ibrox.

"If a company voluntary arrangement is not possible for any particular reason, any buyer of the club and its assets would complete that purchase through a sale by the administrators allowing the football club to continue to operate, with the old company then being placed into liquidation prior to dissolution."

Such a chain of events would have serious football and financial implications for Rangers, nonetheless. The desperate situation was spelled out by the administrators a matter of hours after Dave King, a Rangers director, labelled liquidation as a foregone conclusion.

In a statement, King said: "I do not believe that there is a reasonable prospect that the company can come out of administration. I believe that liquidation is inevitable."

Paul Murray, who is leading a consortium which hopes to take over Rangers, is understood to have met with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs on Tuesday to establish its position. The clear wish of that consortium is to pick up the club from administration rather than liquidation, but it is now involved in a battle against the clock.

Ally McCoist, the Rangers manager, has been asked to be involved in the sale of the club. He said: "There are may be one or two people out there who are underestimating the situation, but it should not be underestimated. We are in a very serious predicament but we are still fighting for our lives and we'll continue to do that.

"I think the sale of the club has always been a measure that everybody knew would become inevitable, but what maybe wasn't inevitable has been the speed of it."