Philippe Clement has forced me into revision of Rangers opinion after committing professional suicide – Hugh Keevins
Our man has his say on the Ibrox crisis as pressure mounts on the club’s beleaguered Belgian boss
Rangers manager Philippe Clement
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Sir Alex Ferguson had a theory about press conferences and history shows he tended not to get too much wrong about anything involving football.
“For a manager at a press conference, you need to come out as the winner,” he said. “You can kill yourself in a press conference. It’s an important part of the job.” Philippe Clement proved he didn’t understand that when he committed professional suicide on Wednesday night.
For the Ibrox manager to tell journalists that his team had delivered one of their better performances this season was an insult to their intelligence and that of the fan base. It was so inflammatory a comment as to provide grounds for dismissal if the board were of a mind to take account of the outside noise coming from their paying customers.
READ MORE: Celtic daft family gave Motherwell star a hero’s welcome for last Rangers winner – and now he wants another one
READ MORE: Rangers loss at Hampden would be ‘travesty’ as Jamie Murphy sees similar vibes now under Clement to 2018 crop
“It’s not about me, it’s about the team,” Clement also said after losing to Aberdeen. What’s he talking about? Clement is the public face of the club when his team is on the park, and what is happening on it is creating growing unrest because of the manager’s now unfathomable approach to his work. Being third in the league table is not the only unusual position the Belgian has adopted lately. He has become a manager who has passed the point of no return and yet remains in office.
If his team should lose to Motherwell in their Premier Sports Cup semi-final tie at Hampden this afternoon it would be a result fit to enter the Hall of Infamy at Ibrox. It would rank with the defeat to Berwick Rangers in 1967, the loss to Hamilton in 1987 and the Progres Niederkorn debacle in 2017. The only thing Clement has going for him today appears to be the fact that the year doesn’t end in a seven.
When the Belgian arrived in Glasgow, I wrote here that his back story at Club Brugge and Monaco suggested he was the first truly credible Rangers manager that Brendan Rodgers had faced. Time, and circumstances, have forced a revision of that opinion. Clawing back the nine-point deficit to Aberdeen and Celtic might, from this distance, seem unlikely.
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But there exists the possibility of Gers falling even further behind, given Clement’s erratic progress. If anything goes wrong at Hampden against Motherwell, interim chairman John Gilligan, an honourable man in an impossible position, would need to acknowledge the hopelessness of extending the manager’s tenure. It would not be a case of the club not being able to afford to sack Clement. They would not be able to afford to keep him.
In my professional lifetime I’ve never known one of the two pre-eminent Scottish clubs to be in such a state of disarray. Their finances are in a perilous state. The temporary residency at Hampden is believed to have cost the club £670,000 in rent and their annual wage bill remains huge. Investment on a substantial level, if not a takeover, is clearly required to prevent a worsening of the club’s transparently troubled state.
But if the suggestion made by chief financial officer James Taylor that an improvement in the player trading model holds the key to fiscal recovery then there’s trouble ahead.
Rangers Chief Financial Officer James Taylor
Who would pay serious money for any of the team, or subs, who lost to Aberdeen? You might, at a push, put forward the name of Connor Barron, but Rangers haven’t even paid for him yet because the fee will be set by a tribunal.
Clement consistently asks for players to be given time and yet he is the one who subbed defender Robin Propper because he was struggling against St Mirren then would not trust the Dutchman to play against Aberdeen. The once-serious man is now the object of ridicule. There was a time when a simple “Sack The Board” would have sufficed for disgusted fans. Last Sunday at Ibrox, one banner read, “Your ineptitude is destroying our club.”
The intended target was presumably what’s left of the board but that comment is now being directed at the manager. He is seen as an impediment to progress and coming up with outrageous statements to camouflage the stricken nature of his team is doing more harm than good. Further adversity today would mean doing nothing is not an option.
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