Rangers manager Philippe Clement has suggested he’s ‘stuck’ with his current squad and that all players still at the club are part of his plans, hinting that the likes of Connor Goldson, Scott Wright, Tom Lawrence and Kieran Dowell not to mention Ben Davies are going nowhere any time soon.

He went onto explain that players’ exits are not like football manager, and that you can’t just ‘dump’ a player that you don’t want:

“Everybody knows what I think about that (Butland’s value). Everybody who is here is part of my plans. It is like that. Otherwise they would not be here. That is the thing with fans, I think it changed with having the PlayStation or Football Manager and you can say ‘this player I don’t like he needs to be out’. It doesn’t work that way. These guys have contracts.”

This strongly suggests Clement has resigned himself to the poor squad he has, and while putting that supposed ‘pressure’ recently on the board regarding new signings, he is also contradicting himself by claiming he’s happy with what he has.

Then he further contradicts himself again by saying if he wasn’t happy with a player they’d be gone, but suggesting he can’t actually do that anyway.

In other words, contradictions, confusion, and yet more mixed messages from this manager who quite frankly spouts as much rubbish as Michael Beale did.

The last time Rangers had a truly honest manager was Giovanni van Bronckhorst – not flawless, and often very cryptic with his comments, but never contradicted himself, and certainly not to the frequency that Clement does.

He is right ultimately though, ditching a player you don’t like isn’t that easy, because they’re contracted for a number of seasons.

You can’t ‘fire’ a footballer aside his violating his contract, you can’t just fire him because he’s not ‘good enough’ – meaning Rangers are stuck with a lot of overpaid wastrels who simply don’t offer value for money and can’t be sold because of their wages.

Sam Lammers is the quintessential example – he’s completely surplus, not part of Clement’s plans, but getting his hefty £22,000pw wage off the roster is proving impossible.

Ibrox Noise explained how difficult that one would be, with the target market being Holland, but no clubs who are interested in him like Utrecht and AZ can actually afford his salary.

And that pretty much sums up the heavy-costing low-value squad as things stand.

Clement knows it, and it’s not boding well for the new season.