Once again, like a broken record, over, and over, and over, we find ourselves unendingly frustrated that yet another manager simply will not tolerate any notion of either James Tavernier or Connor Goldson being rotated or dropped.
Philippe Clement, very vocal about how much he needs to rotate, and having promised early doors that ‘stupid defending’ would be coming to an end, with players being booted from the XI if they did such things, is yet another Rangers boss who will not touch Tav or Goldson.
The bit that gets our goat is how ruthless he was with Todd Cantwell, removing him on 35 minutes v Aris and making a big hooh hah about it and a song and dance, all because the guy wasn’t playing the exact RW role the boss wanted, but won’t remove either Tav or Goldson when both are being repeatedly ripped apart.
We have been kinder this season to Tav, at least we’ve tried to, but this calendar year his all-round game has plummeted and he’s way down the list compared with where he was last year.
And the defending has been the biggest culprit – he’s nowhere the top of the leaderboards any more, and yet still goes unchallenged in his position.
Same for Goldson. He’s miles down the bottom of those lists.
Which makes us think their untouchable nature isn’t so much contractual, as captaincy-based.
One is the captain, the other the vice – and we can’t ever recall aside Barry Ferguson any captain ever been dropped to the bench at Rangers.
Ferguson was dropped by PLG amid a huge controversy, but this is a bygone era.
And as recently as 2012-2016, McCulloch was the captain and never, EVER got dropped no matter how badly he was playing.
And the exact same scenario was playing out there – the captain or vice not being accountable to his errors.
Our questions at Ibrox Noise made the news back in those days, with reporters for Sky claiming the idea of McCulloch having a contractual guarantee of playing wasn’t true, but of course, how would they know?
Well, the same perk seems to be there for Tav and Goldson.
If Clement or any other manager had the power to rest/drop/bench them like they do any other player in the team, they would do so.
They clearly don’t.
Either that, or strangely, Clement and his three recent predecessors truly do believe Tav and Goldson are the best we have and the best we can do.
That would be downright odd.