So now that Philippe Clement has absolutely committed to Rangers for the truly long term and will remain at Ibrox till 2028, where do things sit for the club and for the manager.
His debut season was a mixed patch – starting off brilliantly, he secured the League Cup, but while league (and European form) looked initially promising, domestic consistency tailed off painfully in March, while his tactical naïveté v Benfica at Ibrox cost Rangers a place in the quarter finals of the Europa League.
He also never came close to beating Celtic at any point in the season in four attempts.
Rangers have, however, made the categorical decision that he is the right man, and we as fans must hold the board’s faith in that, because it’s all in now, and a big commitment on all sides.
Of course, it technically already was, but the chairman made it abundantly clear Clement will not be going anywhere no matter what happens next season, and this was affirmed by the 12 month extension.
So, what does this mean?
Honestly? We’re not quite waving the white flag on next season just yet, we’re not entirely throwing in the towel, but it’s clear our squad is considerably behind Celtic’s and the sentiments coming out of Ibrox now is that the rebuild wasn’t just a summer job, but a complete overhaul, and one that could take considerable time.
While it’s not capitulation on next season’s title ambitions, it’s clear we’re not going in as favourites and we don’t appear ‘all in’ on winning the thing.
There are no sentiments coming from Rangers about a title challenge in 24/25.
This means, unless Clement works a miracle with the threadbare squad he has, Celtic will probably secure 55 to equal us, and probably 56 to go past us in titles for the first time in history.
Our club appears to have made that call. How can a squad with Dessers and Jefte challenge Celtic as things stand?
On one hand ‘how dare they’, second is last, but on the other this isn’t 1998 when Dick Advocaat dumped 99% of Walter’s aging 9IAR squad and literally bought a whole new clump of players with around £35M (which stretched way further back then) and suddenly had a world class squad on his hands. And did the same thing the summer after that too.
We can’t just immediately ditch all the players and buy top class replacements – it’s not 1998 any more and we don’t have that kind of money now. And what we do have doesn’t go anywhere near as far as it did.
So it looks like a brand new Rangers Project has just started.
Do we like it? No. We don’t, winning is everything.
But the board have made the call to begin anew and trust Clement long term so we must do the same.
Pity he’ll still pick James Tavernier at RB and shunt Dujon Sterling to left wing…