Forget all the fuss about a young squad, a transition period and the need for two or three transfer windows to get everything right.
Philippe Clement has promised a media update from Rangers chief executive Patrick Stewart. And the only thing the new CEO can do Real To appease an angry fanbase now is that Clement is no more. Nothing else will save it.
When a club has lost £17.2m and cut its wage bill, it’s hard to paint lipstick on a pig.
Stewart could promise to take Rangers out of the January window stronger than they started. You can put the kettle on for more talk about developing a player trading model that will give Celtic value for money. A call to give the manager more time to get it right is more likely than not.
That may be the only realistic, pragmatic line at a time when Celtic enjoy a huge financial advantage, play Champions League football and sell players for tens of millions of pounds every year.
The problem is that fans don’t want to hear things like that. They’ve heard enough promises about jam tomorrow.
It’s an ordeal for Clement as his Rangers team drops more points on the road, this time in Dundee
New CEO Patrick Stewart will address fans about the current situation at Ibrox
Igamane, centre, was a shining spark for Rangers but even he looked dumbfounded at Dens
A 1-1 draw with a worn, bone-deep injury-hit Dundee felt like end-of-year stuff. The night an angry fanbase reached the point of no return.
The team bus had barely put the equipment in the basket when the Rangers Supporters Association called for ‘real leadership from our new chairman and chief executive’ and ‘decisive action’ to relieve the manager of his duties.
The Rangers board does not do that want to to fire Philippe Clement. They don’t want to to return to the rinse-and-repeat cycle of expensively sacking a manager at the turn of the year, launching a new squad and rebuilding a new squad. Why would they?
They tried to upset Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Michael Beale – and what did they gain? A crippling compensation bill and a man dropping points right, left and center in the football hotspots of Paisley, Motherwell and Dundee.
Under Clement, Rangers are a team with bipolar tendencies. Put them under the Ibrox spotlights on Thursday evening in the Europa League against Tottenham or Steaua Bucharest and they are lively and cheerful.
Put them under the spotlight at Dens Park on Thursday evening against a team with a fraction of the budget, ten injuries and two goalkeepers on the bench and they will lack the creativity or depth to beat Dundee. And that is not an isolated example.
Since Christmas, Rangers have dropped more away points than Celtic have in the last nine months. Former striker Kris Boyd says the record is a ‘disgrace’ and he is not wrong.
Clement cut a lonely and frustrated figure as he was booed off the pitch on Tayside
Rangers players Propper, left and Cerny look dejected after another failure away from home
One fans association has already decided that Clement should be fired
After that display on Tayside, the stats focused on Clement’s team winning just three of their 11 away games in the Premier League this season.
Go back further and the broader picture is even more damning. Since January last year, this Rangers team has won just eight of their 21 league games away from home. That’s a winning percentage of 40 percent and for a team with a huge wage bill, 24 points out of a possible 63 is a deplorable record.
As a result, league points are now less of an issue than they should be. Fifteen behind Celtic, with an inferior goal difference, the Premier League now hardly matters.
The only real question is whether Clement is the man to take the team forward. And if not, who will look at the last three years at Rangers and think that the manager’s job is anything but an act of hari-kari career?
For the time being, Clement will hold on to his office. And directors may see an opportunity to buy some time with back-to-back home games against struggling St Johnstone and Aberdeen sides, followed by a Scottish Cup shooty-in against non-league Fraserburgh.
They could even take their chances to go to Old Trafford and get a Europa League result against a Manchester United team even weaker than themselves.
From the end of the month, the away games take a dark turn. A horrific run begins with a trip to Tannadice to whip Dundee United into form, followed by games at Hearts, Kilmarnock – on a surface they hate – Celtic, Dundee (again) and then Aberdeen. They have already dropped points in five of the six this season.
Ironically, the only thing that shows any sign of improvement under Clement is the performance against Celtic. Like many Premier League sides, there is not enough depth and quality to play three games a week and rotate key players. Given the amounts spent, that should actually be the case.
While the Belgian repeatedly brags about a young, inexperienced team, the average age of the starting XI at Dens Park was actually 25. Goalkeeper Liam Kelly is 28, captain Robin Propper 31. Goalscorer Vaclav Cerny is 27 while Ianis Hagi has not been behind the years. rookie at age 26. Although Jefte and Hamza Igamane can rightly be regarded as raw talents with potential, youth and inexperience are much less of a problem. Rangers team then the most fundamental part of them all. Skill.
Directors aligned themselves with Clement’s vision for the future by adding another twelve months to his contract last summer, which raised questions. Can Rangers really afford to sack him?
If fans drift away and season ticket renewals are in jeopardy, Patrick Stewart may be asked to answer a slightly different question. If business is this bad, how can they afford to keep him?
Who can blame Taylor if he’s unhappy as Tierney’s stooge?
To hear people talk about Kieran Tierney, his Celtic reveal should be quite a spectacle.
The press conference begins with Brendan Rodgers pushing him in a wheelchair up Celtic Way, cheered on by misty-eyed fans.
Once he reaches the main stand, he is placed in a stairlift to continue his journey to the boardroom, where he carefully lifts the pen (trying not to break a wrist) and signs a contract guaranteeing no more than twenty games per season . In a good year.
Some concerns about Tierney’s injury history are valid. His only first-team appearance this season came against Crystal Palace in the Carabao Cup and was cut short by cramp. Before that, his last start was Scotland’s 1-1 draw with Switzerland at the 2024 European Championship, when a hamstring injury ruled him out for four months.
Injury-prone Tierney is stretchered off the field during Scotland’s match against Switzerland
Brendan Rodgers comforts Greg Taylor after Celtic fans chant Tierney’s name
Knee surgery played a major role in his downfall at Arsenal. By the time he fought his way back to fitness, Mikel Arteta had signed Oleksandr Zinchenko and gone out of fashion.
Lately it has felt as if Arteta would rather sign a random pensioner off the street than play one of the most talented Scottish players of his generation at left-back. Even when he was fit as a fiddle.
So the Tierney who returns to Celtic is not the young force of old. Although he is still only 27, the last time he made 60 appearances in a season was in 2017/18, when Brendan Rodgers was able to say what he liked about the supporters without the Green Brigade taking charge.
For that reason alone, Rodgers needs an extra left back who can play 20 to 30 first-team games a year. And the perfect man for the job is Greg Taylor.
The problem is that recent events have left Taylor feeling underappreciated. Celtic appear reluctant to pay him the wages of a 27-year-old senior player with international and Champions League experience. Some of the support clearly doesn’t make sense to him at all. Even the manager who speaks to him every week is making plans to replace him.
Celtic clearly need a ready and reliable sidekick who can replace Tierney when his body fails him. If Greg Taylor feels he is more than an unloved understudy sent off for the odd home game against Ross County and Dundee, he may think he is better off elsewhere.