Rangers manager Philippe Clement has announced the ‘end of a cycle’ at Rangers, confirming what Ibrox Noise reported some days ago, a colossal overhaul will be happening this summer to entirely reinvigorate a situation at the club which has become case-critical.
While when one thinks of ‘stale’ at Ibrox and immediately ponders James Tavernier, Connor Goldson, Borna Barisic and perhaps John Lundstram, it is generally noted that there is a lot more at the club that has reached the end of its natural life.
And specifically speaking it’s the absolute, definitive end of the Steven Gerrard era which, let’s face it, we are still technically in.
The baseline Rangers core is those four Gerrard signings, and we even had his assistant as our manager for a year – a whole plethora of Rangers as a club is based on the Gerrard era, and even THAT owed a lot to the Mark Warburton era in itself.
Clement is telling us that ends this summer, that cycle, that entire 2016/2018 to present day period which very much shapes the club and how it performs.
After all, pre-Warburton, it was the Walter model – the solid 4-4-2 under him then Ally McCoist, before Warburton introduced 4-3-3 and while there’s been variations of the ‘Barca’ model since then, fundamentally the overlapping fullbacks and tiki tika football Bread Man played is still at the club.
Clement seems eager to break that, to change that, to end this loser cycle, because that’s what this period has been.
Forget 55 and even Gio’s cup or Clement’s league cup, 3 trophies since 2011 is not Rangers, not even remotely, and Clement wants to start the new cycle by winning next weekend – good luck with that we say.
But for now, it’s about breaking the loser patterns Rangers have had for a decade, and starting something new which actually acts like the Rangers it should be.
We definitely agree with Clement on this.
But then… if he picks Tav and Goldson come next season as well, we basically throw the towel in.