We’re more than a little puzzled by Rangers manager Philippe Clement’s curious candour in confirming Todd Cantwell is unhappy at Rangers, wants to leave, has handed in a transfer request and has been ditched to the B Team as a result.
The curiosity is of course going public with this info, which surely is going to drive Cantwell’s value down.
By confirming this odd news, Clement has weakened Rangers’ hand, in which often we’ll see players likely to leave not playing, and being excused as a ‘minor knock’ or illness.
Why? To preserve their price tag – if courting clubs know the player wants to leave, they just don’t have to give the same transfer fee – it hands power to the buying club, and not to Rangers.
Clement has done the same with Sam Lammers – while the big Dutchman is closing in finally on an exit to FC Twente Clement has confirmed the lad isn’t part of Rangers’ plans, and this drives his price down.
At a time when Rangers need to sell players for as decent a sum as we can get, our manager seems quite content to tell the world Cantwell and Lammers aren’t part of his plans and they want to leave. Hurting their ‘retail’ value in the process.
Clement hasn’t done a lot right since March, frankly.
Barely a word he’s said has struck us as the rational ‘straight shooting common sense’ stuff he was being lauded for when he joined, and now his comments come across as someone who evidently doesn’t know what he’s doing.
He whined about money, lack of funds, then seemingly hijacks the club’s attempt to get the peak possible transfer sum for two of its most useful financial assets.
We’ve seen a lot more Rangers fans question Clement of late, which given the drivel from every area of management through to squad since early spring isn’t that surprising.
Most still back him and blame the board (and players), but at what point does he shoulder some responsibility for the incompetence?
Rangers are being badly run from the top down – no one denies this, but Clement is part of the problem right now, and not seemingly part of any solution.