We have to admit we simply don’t understand Rangers manager Philippe Clement any more.
After that start, which it seems now flattered to deceive, his results have caved just like Beale and Gio and even Gerrard’s, but if we overlook the ongoing Tav and Goldson nonsense, there’s something else we can’t understand.
Speaking a few months ago, Dujon Sterling explained the manager couldn’t believe he wasn’t playing more. That Clement was so impressed in training he couldn’t understand the ex-Chelsea being benched or out of the squad.
Yet Clement has completely and totally wasted the player, who had to sit on the bench again as Kieran Dowell took his place completely undeservedly.
The manager talks repeatedly about rotation, but it seems to us he’s full of it, like most managers.
Why? Because he only rotates some players.
Butland, Tavernier, Goldson, Lundstram, Silva and Dessers have barely been or not been rotated at all under his watch.
A bunch of players there who clearly aren’t delivering yet there is very little to no rotation. The only one who has been a bit is Dessers, but it’s for Silva.
Otherwise, it’s in fact all the players who are actually delivering now or in the past who then lose their place, JUST LIKE EVERY PREVIOUS RANGERS MANAGER.
Sterling, Balogun, McCrorie, Matondo, Roofe, Cantwell (for OF) you name it.
Some made a claim that he was trying to manage Sterling’s injury – yet Sima is straight back into the starting XI after 4 months out, and so is Dowell?
Rangers have better options every single match on the bench, yet they only ever get cameos, whatever they do in those cameos.
Just like with all Clement’s predecessors, he sticks stubbornly by the players who don’t perform, and let the ones hungry to play and impress rot on the bench.
In short, Clement doesn’t rotate at all, he sticks to a same core of about 6+ players, and just rotates around them.
We’d be fine with this if he was winning, and indeed, we ignored our misgivings about it while we indeed were winning, but we aren’t any more and Clement’s Rangers has caved entirely.
And you can forget your claims that ‘this isn’t his team’.
Yes it is. He signed Silva, he plays, he’s terrible. He signed Dio, he’s been mince. He signed Cortes then suicidally played him on THAT surface that he specificially kept Kemar Roofe off. Lost him for the season. He has a whole squad to choose from, but keeps picking the same rubbish that can’t win anything. Doesn’t matter if most of them ‘aren’t his players’, he’s still picking the worst ones like his predecessors did. A blind man can tell you Sterling should be in midfield and Balogun at the back.
The point is Clement, like Gerrard all those years ago, says one thing and does another. Remember on his appointment Gerrard demanding all players played with hunger, rage and desire, and he would drop anyone not? Complete poppycock.
Clement says he will rotate, he says EVERY player needs to rotate, that he can’t play all the players every match, but doesn’t actually comprehensively rotate.
Instead the same old tired team trots out and Sterling and Balogun sit on the bench.
If you keep your best players in the dugout, they can’t win on the pitch, can they?