It must be said Rangers’ display v Hibernian was utterly dire, and all that’s left of positivity is the usual Happy Clappers’ ‘just get behind the team and manager ffs’ patter alongside ‘3 points are what matter’.
In a sense that’s very true, you will win the league if you win every match 1-0. True story that.
But while we can easily point at the Late Great Walter Smith and mention the number of times he also won ugly (few would deny Walter’s football wasn’t entirely beautiful to watch), he won titles and competitions with it. If you win stuff, how you win it doesn’t matter.
But if you’re not winning anything, your inadequacies will be far more scrutinised.
Let’s not make up nonsense that Clement didn’t have anything to spend this summer – Philippe Clement spent £16M this summer; maybe not a King’s ransom and not as high as Celtic or indeed last season, but not buttons either.
It was enough to sign plenty marquee players, whether on loan or not, and the club did bring in talent; Cerny, Propper, Igamane, Barron, Bajrami, Diomande permanent – let’s not pretend Philippe Clement had nothing to spend or no good freebies.
The reality is a lot of fans are recognising how bad a manager Philippe Clement actually is, because your CV prior to Rangers doesn’t matter if you can’t translate it to our club.
The Happy Clappers just cheer on banging their drums supporting no matter the weather, usually shouting down anyone with a word of concern or two, meanwhile Rangers labour to wins over mince like Hibs and languish a ridiculous 5 points behind Aberdeen after 6 matches.
We’re not even challenging Celtic, we’re barely up to speed with the Sheep!
It does seem a lot of fans have just accepted our lot, accepted where we are, and ‘give them a chance ffs’, but it’s safe to say Clement is as bad a manager for Rangers as Pedro was. He’s not as good as Michael Beale and that’s very sad indeed.
But nothing will change. He’ll keep on making his dreadful selections, his bad subs, his nonsense excuses and idiotic press conferences, and the Happy Clappers will keep on supporting while Rangers trudge from one mess to another on the pitch.
And every so often we’ll get a shockingly good result in Europe and ‘all will be well again’.
Reminds us a bit of Paul Le Guen in truth.
But nothing changes if nothing changes.