Rangers manager Philippe Clement attended a short-notice Q&A at Edmiston House on Tuesday evening, with protests held beforehand about the state of the club and the board, but it was one answer which raised massive questions both about his honesty, and his ability.
If we recall from a few months ago, Clement ‘promised’ that we would see a better Rangers in October, that the team and (new) players would be starting to click into gear by next month. He was fairly unconvincing about this, and it was a very strange claim to make.
But at the Q&A he’d changed tack completely, and now it’s a ‘couple of years’.
He said:
“Everybody is working really hard for that and they need to realise players coming into this club need time to adapt, there is nobody in the world who can predict how they will react. You have some players – not only here but all over the world – who need three months, six months and some after a week adapt. It’s a really personal thing you can’t predict before. I’m very sure we brought in several really talented players who will grow and will become better the next couple of years. I don’t like to take out individuals but a young lad like a Connor Barron who played in some of the games at Aberdeen, not all the games, he has made already a big step forward and got rewarded also by being selected for Scotland. Jefte is only 20 and already proving good things. It’s about working hard with the team and make them gel to create connections.”
Taking this at face value, Clement appears to be buying another 24 months of failure, two years before the team and players are starting to really fit, click, and become a proper team.
Now, the pragmatist could argue that a project takes time, and that if we want the Rangers we know and love back, it’s not overnight.
Problem is this manager shifts the goalposts every week – one minute we’ll have players and a team in October, the next we are waiting literally till 2026.
Clement changes his ‘mind’ frequently, and it’s just one of many reasons he’s miles out of his depth and hard to trust.
We can’t take much of what he says seriously.