GOING by the cameraphone footage of Philippe Clement standing outside Ibrox after last weekend’s horrific three-goal reverse to Celtic and babbling on about irrelevant stats to an irate collection of supporters, it cannot be long until it all boils over at Rangers.
Clement is on a hiding to nothing with the squad of players he is being asked to work with there, but he is only going to speed up his own demise by jabbering on about how taking six off Ross County was one of the best results of the past four years at a club which reached a European final in 2022.
He came across as a bloke losing his grip on reality as Rangers’ endeavours to win the title last term foundered — and, this season, has offered little to suggest he has regained a handle on the job he took over just under a year ago. Or, for that matter, put right the injury issues he inherited from previous boss Michael Beale and made such a song and dance about fixing.
John Bennett, John Greig and Douglas Park hold the Premiership trophy in 2021
Philippe Clement has been left carrying the can for a Rangers squad low on star quality
Clement, though, is unlikely to be the central focus of ire should that furious gathering on Edmiston Drive to welcome the team bus back from Parkhead prove to be the small acorn from which a large tree shall grow.
Chairman John Bennett is already getting the photoshop treatment on social media and having his mugshot stuck behind the big red circle with the line through it. You know, the same thing reserved for former MD Stewart Robertson and ex-sports director Ross Wilson during the last outbreak of disgruntlement a couple of years back.
And, listen, he deserves it. He’s been on the board since 2015 and involved, to some degree, in all manner of awful decisions.
With the club still not sure of a permanent return to Ibrox because of construction work, still without a CEO, out of the Champions League, just done with another mess of a transfer window and waving Celtic off over the horizon while firing one of their fans from a marketing role after finding out he’d been on Twitter posting about ‘Huns’, everything has just come to a head.
That last Old Firm game served as the encapsulation of an unavoidable truth and that’s why there is so much fury with the Ibrox fan base.
Celtic are, once again, miles and miles ahead both on and off the field and it is incredibly difficult to see how that ever changes now. Even the hardest of the hardcore at Rangers can see it. And someone is going to have to get it in the neck.
Bennett has been a real disappointment as chairman. For all the money he has invested — and he has invested plenty — the days of just being thankful to him and others for saving the club post-2012 are over.
Rangers are very much back in the role of bridesmaid thanks to dreadful mismanagement and their fans will be entirely justified in turning their unhappiness into protest given how mercilessly they have been milked by the club down the years.
Yet, they would be well advised to consider how it got to this — and remember that there are others with skin in the game inside Rangers who ought to be brought back into the public consciousness as the angry mob get their banners and placards ready.
Captain James Tavernier has been criticised by some Rangers supporters
Rangers allowed talents like Alfredo Morelos to run down their contracts and leave for free
When Rangers won the title against all odds in 2021, stopping 10-in-a-Row, their manager Steven Gerrard emerged, drenched in champagne following the final home game against Aberdeen, to state: ‘This has to be a launchpad. We have to fix the roof now while the sun is shining and everyone’s happy. Recruitment is key now.’
Inside, chairman Douglas Park stood beside then vice-chair Bennett and concurred: ‘This is the first title we’ve got. It’s where we want to be and, now, we want to try and do our best to make sure there’s many more’.
As it was, Gerrard got Fashion Sakala, John Lundstram, Nnamdi Ofoborh and Juninho Bacuna that summer.
It was a real Sliding Doors moment.
Rangers failed Gerrard. They had their foot on Celtic’s throats — a crumbling empire that got lucky by bringing in Ange Postecoglou and giving him carte blanche to rebuild a broken squad — and backed off. They had no real plan to capitalise on the platform delivered by winning the title.
That’s on Park, who remains the second-biggest shareholder and still has his son Graeme — one of the three-man panel which sourced Pedro Caixinha back in the day and a director since 2015 — on the board.
Lots of things are on the Parks. A quick look back through Douglas’ time as the
figurehead of the operation tells you that.
Alfredo Morelos and Ryan Kent could have kickstarted the ‘player-trading model’ when Lille and Leeds were ready to pay £30million for them. Both ended up leaving for nothing.
Gerrard probably would have quit for Aston Villa anyway, but he wasn’t pointing out before his departure that the club ‘did not spend a penny in two windows’ for the good of his health.
Every shilling possible was drained from the pockets of punters in the wake of ‘55’, but what did they get in return? Blamed for ticketing chaos on the club’s ill-fated return to Champions League qualifiers against Malmo — only for Robertson to admit, three months later, that the whole operation had been ‘a shambles, frankly’.
Fans also got it in the neck for complaining about a ludicrous plan to take part in a ‘Sydney Super Cup’, which would have seen Postecoglou feted in his homeland for somehow winning the 2022 league title with Rangers as chief support.
There was the classless sidelining of former chairman Dave King with barely a mention. The failure to back former boss Giovanni van Bronckhorst after he had secured a Champions League windfall by beating PSV Eindhoven in the qualifiers.
In the previous January window, he’d been given Aaron Ramsey, Amad Diallo, James Sands and Mateusz Zukowski and still made it to the Europa League final, another platform from which the directors failed to construct anything lasting.
Forward Sam Lammers failed to impress after arriving for a big transfer fee
The 150th anniversary celebrations were a flop, summed up by a £105 ‘Gallant Pioneers’ kit that the side were supposed to wear in a game against Aberdeen — and didn’t!
And, last but not least , there was the appointment of Gerrard’s old No2 Beale after he’d turned up in the director’s box like the Grim Reaper when Van Bronckhorst was battling to hold onto his job. It was appalling. The kind of action that showed he should never have been considered as a manager of Rangers.
The only act of misjudgment more heinous than giving him a contract was giving him, when Bennett had taken over from Park, free rein to spend £21m on the likes of Sam Lammers, Jose Cifuentes, Cyriel Dessers, and Danilo.
Over and over again, the story of Rangers in the past decade has been one of the board finding themselves with opportunities to springboard forward before falling flat on their face. The image of Park snr and Bennett taking the field together on the first day of the 2021-22 season and running a home-made league flag the wrong way up the pole sums their reigns up pretty well.
Rangers require big investment. If that’s not in the offing, and it doesn’t look like it is, they need fresh faces and ideas at the top.
Instead, in recent years, we’ve just seen King make way for Park and then Park make way for Bennett, who now looks to be struggling with the weight of the crown in an environment where you never quite know what manoeuvres are taking place.
If supporters really are ready to protest over him, that’s fair enough. However, in taking to the streets, it should not be forgotten that a route taken through at least one particular Park was just as responsible for landing them in the predicament they’re in.
Steve Clarke's Scotland have only won one out of their last 13 matches
The only joke is Clarke is still in Scotland hotseat
THERE’S not much more to say about Steve Clarke and Scotland, is there?
The magic’s gone. It disappeared for good the moment that game of a generation at Euro 2024 against Hungary, that night of dreams and romance and destiny, turned into a 90-minute exercise in sucking out your soul.
If Clarke had chucked it there and then — or, at least, agreed a severance deal — it would have been okay. In time.
But, nah. He’s returned from his summer spent traversing the foothills of the Himalayas — or whatever he was up to for all that time after slipping off into the night after the Euros — and actually looks like he’s trying to gaslight us.
Last week, he was trotting out lame jokes about what was an intensely hurtful experience for so many people in June. This week, it’s been his assistant John Carver cracking the funnies.
‘It’s quite incredible because the amount of people I’ve met since the Euros… not one person has come up to me and said he or she was disappointed,’ said Carver the other day.
I know what I’d like to go up to him and say. ‘HAVE YOU HONESTLY LOST YOUR MARBLES, YOU MANIAC?’
Andy Robertson said he was disappointed. So did John McGinn. Did Carver not talk to them? A whole bloomin’ country ended up in mourning, for crying out loud.
The same country Carver suggested should be realistic because of its size — before having to ask what the population actually is. This stuff must be intentional. No one can be as hopelessly out of touch as Clarke and Carver appear.
Clarke, most graciously, has pointed out he deserves the last two years of his lucrative contract before going away to do something different.
Mercifully, a record that will extend to one win in 14 in tonight’s Nations League fixture in Lisbon should have a say in things too.
Sure, it would be nice to think we might all be able to look back on this and laugh in future. To reflect on the good times and forgive Clarke for proving humour, like a national football team, can be a danger to health in the wrong hands.
But that depends on having someone else in charge before the World Cup qualifiers in March.
Aberdeen striker Duk Lopes has apologised for failing to report to training in July
Duk humbling a tale of times
SO, Luis ‘Duk’ Lopes is finally back at Aberdeen with his tail between his legs after failing to report for training in July.
Gosh, how hollow his apology over his behaviour sounds. Not so long ago, he was the darling of the Dons support after coming in alongside a certain Bojan Miovski. In the interim, Miovski has earned a life-changing £6.8million move to Girona and is playing in Spain’s Primera Liga while he’s left looking like a prize plonker with an uncertain future.
It is a useful tale for our times. One which shows sticking in, working hard and repaying people who gave you a chance will always be a better way forward than thinking you make the rules and everyone else has to get in line.