It’s the morning after the afternoon before, and now that the dust has settled, it’s clear as day, that Philippe Clement cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.
He got the ‘new manager bounce’ from this ramshackle squad for a fair few matches, but while Hearts hinted that a team with Cyriel Dessers, Connor Goldson and Sam Lammers in it was quite capable of still being terrible, the dropped points at Pittodrie showed just what Clement really has on his plate.
Now, we stand by that we don’t think it was his best 90 either as the manager of our club, a few errors made, but he’s still by a distance the best boss in a generation at Rangers, and this is a brand new league and club for him. He’s still a fantastic manager with a Midas Touch.
But he’s not Harry Potter.
A truly abysmal Aberdeen (check the stats, they were barely any better at home to Rangers than they were at Celtic) managed to carve this haphazard defence open with ease a few times, settled back into a low block after 11 minutes and let Rangers have a go.
And the misses from Sam Lammers and indeed rather meek shots from Danilo showed that Clement has a glut of work to do to get Rangers into title-winning condition.
It doesn’t matter that Celtic dropped their own points, it mattered that Rangers couldn’t, and still did. And the players in this squad just aren’t up to Rangers Standard.
Haven’t been for years.
Rangers Standard v today:
Arthur Numan v Borna Barisic
Alan Hutton or Gary Stevens v James Tavernier
Carlos Cuellar or David Weir v Connor Goldson
Barry Ferguson v John Lundstram
Michael Mols v Danilo
It’s just a few examples of some of our fine players of the past, of Rangers standard, compared with present.
These players of the past were truly exceptional talents, but back in the day when Walter Smith was signing Nikica Jelavic, today Michael Beale was getting in Cyriel Dessers.
The gulf between where we are today and where we need to be is significant – our squad is massively short of the quality it needs to be the best team in Scotland.
We have a great manager who’s still learning the club and league, but the squad needs a chasm of work too.
And we’re quite sure Philippe Clement knows this.