Phillipe Clement can protest all he likes, but his Rangers team are going backwards and there’s no evidence that he’s the man to turn it around

It’s not even Bonfire Night and Philippe Clement appears to be in serious danger of becoming the next Rangers manager to be sacked to appease an increasingly disillusioned fan base.

With his side rarely shining this season, another poor performance at Pittodrie felt to many like the point of no return for the Belgian.

Six months of progress have been followed by six months of regression. Any understanding Clement gained given the limitations he has been working with has now evaporated as one gloomy day followed another.

His calls for patience and promises of jam tomorrow seem increasingly hollow as Jimmy Thelin’s recalibrated Aberdeen side threatens to become a dot on the horizon.

The Dons are not yet out of sight in second place, but Clement’s battle for credibility was massively damaged in midweek – both by the outcome and his words.

The charge sheet thrown at the manager is getting longer by the week.

There is the lack of consistency. The team rarely performs 90 minutes. After being in charge for over a year, no one can clearly distinguish the playing pattern anymore.

But above all, Clement’s side looked weak both physically and mentally at Pittodrie. There was an edge in the Dons’ game that the visitors lacked.

Thelin’s team won the match because they fought and persevered when the going got tough. Whatever limitations this Rangers side may have, the fact that they didn’t look up to the fight was hugely damning.

“I want to see more,” Clement admitted yesterday. “Those are the things we’re working on. Those are the things we’re talking about.

‘You see it when things are going well. And we need to turn that around so that it’s always there. Those are the basic principles.

‘That was one of the strong points last season, that this team dug in (during) the difficult moments to turn the tide.’

If that willingness to risk bodies and win tackles was there in the early stages of Clement’s reign, where has it gone?

While there has been a significant turnaround among the players, it is the manager’s job to ensure that those who come in are up for a joke. At all levels of football, full commitment is the least you can expect.

To be honest, it’s been half-hearted all over the field for most of this season.

The two goals lost by Clement’s team in midweek were terrible. They have not yet had a clean sheet in three domestic matches.

Apart from a brief period early in the second half, the midfield again failed to move the ball quickly enough and then withered as the Dons stepped up a gear.

Despite Nedim Bajrami’s stunning goal, Clement’s men lacked conviction in the final third. They have now scored just twice in five away games in the Premier League, the second-worst record in the division.

The team is going backwards in every conceivable way. And there is no evidence that Clement can reverse that trend.

“It’s our job,” he insisted. ‘I have never said in a year that it is my job or that I have done anything alone. It was always working together with the players, with the staff, with the board, with everyone.’

To an increasingly bewildered support, his comments after the match at Pittodrie were the equivalent of setting fire to a tanker’s worth of fuel.

Most observers thought they had witnessed a miserable display in the first half, followed by an improvement for twenty minutes before the familiar sound of bottles clashing.

Clement’s opinion of the proceedings – that it was one of the better displays of the season – put him in a minority of one and probably said a lot about the quality of fare his side produced.

Yesterday he said unrepentantly: ‘I didn’t say everything was fine, that I was happy with the way we are conceding goals or how we are conceding chances. I didn’t quite say that.

‘I didn’t say it was a great performance either. I didn’t say this was the best performance. I also gave credit to Aberdeen for what they did.

“I saw the same things, the things the team did well and the things we didn’t do well, why we lost the game.

‘I saw a team that tried until the last second of the game and in the last minute Tav (James Tavernier) headed just wide of the post.

“It’s not that the team doesn’t want to (participate) or that they give up or anything like that.

“So we’ll keep fighting to get results our way and make things better and certainly more consistent. To get more of the football we saw against Malmö, against (Steaua) Bucharest.”

While those games told you that this Rangers team is performing well, they are looking more and more like outliers.

Much better known were the matches against Dynamo Kiev, Hearts, Kilmarnock, Celtic and Aberdeen.

That is not a recipe for progress. It is no reason for supporters to cling to the belief that everything will be fine.

“Last season they saw that, with the right conclusions, with the right attitude, with the right mentality, with the right spirit, things can change very quickly,” Clement insisted.

‘We are working very hard on this with the entire group and to know that every loss is a tragedy is very bad. That’s what you have to live with. It’s what you have to embrace.’

Despite the club apparently not wanting to undergo another mid-season management change, a win against Motherwell in tomorrow’s Premier Sports Cup semi-final at Hampden feels non-negotiable.

An institution that is missing some key people in the boardroom will still find a way to fire a manager if the anger of the masses dictates. They will have no alternative.

But for now, Clement plans to continue.

“I know what project I started in June,” he added. ‘It was another project (of the one) I started in October.

‘We had a conversation in June that it was a very big challenge. That is also the reason that the contract was negotiated on both sides and what had to be done.

‘We will continue to work on that. They didn’t want to go back to 2012, when the club was bankrupt.

‘So a major change had to take place in all respects. Young players had to be brought in, there had to be a major pay cut in the team, many transfers had to take place.

‘As a club we perhaps wanted to make more outgoing transfers, bring in more money to use in the transfer market. That was ultimately not possible.

‘So the club knows where it comes from. It is now the beginning of a better period, and that is not reflected in the results. Yes, that’s true. It’s completely true.

‘But a foundation is now being laid for the future, from which a healthier club can grow. And everyone knew that this was not possible in one transfer period.

‘Of course I know that if you lose ten games in a row and all the players don’t want to work with you, it creates an environment in which you cannot work. But that is not the case at all.’