Like Gio van Bronckhorst and Michael Beale before him, Philippe Clement is finding out the hard way just how fickle life as Rangers boss can be.
After all, it was only a matter of months ago that the Ibrox gaffer was being lauded by the light blue legions as the best thing to have come out of Belgium since chocolate and waffles. Now, just eight games into the new campaign, he stands accused by a growing section of the fanbase who’d like to see him emptied of being nothing more than a rambling waffler.
Of course, it’s a cycle we’ve seen play out before. Van Bronckhorst may have led Gers on their Seville thrill ride but a mere 187 days later, he was gone, bulleted after Champions League humiliation began to bleed into domestic ambitions. Then came Beale, the man once written up as the tactical mastermind behind Steven Gerrard’s 2021 unbeaten title winners. It wouldn’t take long for the Londoner to be written off as a dugout dunce.
Now it’s Clement’s turn to go from hero to zero in the eyes of some. But whereas the Gers board were quick to push the button on his predecessors, the man currently seated in the Ibrox merry-go-round knows he’s likely to have some time yet before he suffers the same fate.
That’s down to a combination of the new four-year deal he was handed only 12 weeks ago and the fact with no permanent chairman nor a CEO in post, it doesn’t look like there’s anyone at Ibrox currently possessing the power to sack a manager. But for Clement, his saving grace should also come down to the fact that if Rangers are to escape their current doom spiral, they have to find a way out of their vicious cycle of hiring and firing bosses.
“Of course it’s the only way,” he said. “But it’s also not the only way here. It’s been the only way in clubs all over over the world. If you change ideas every three months, six months or every year, of course there’s no consistency in the club. So you need to follow a track, you need to follow one process that everybody keeps on going in the same direction.
“That’s crucial. Otherwise you always have ups and downs and you will change a lot because if you go in a emotion of the day or one or two results, then you can never create consistency over the long term. Of course, that was all the idea about the contract from the board and also from me to show that I would not leave if something else came along.
“So everybody who did this job knows to make that rebuild and cut wages while making the club sustainable and investing in young players for now and for the future, it takes time. You cannot do that in one, two, three months. That’s impossible.”
So while the upheaval caused by this summer’s huge rebuild and wage-bill slashing project might yet cause futher short-term pain, Clement insists it’s a necessary exercise that has to be allowed to play out if the club are serious about achieving long-term success.
He continued: ”Yes and everyone is working really hard to make it as fast as possible, that I can say to the fans. People who are not happy now, they were probably happy really happy with me six months ago, nine months ago. I am still the same man. In fact, I’m working even much harder than I did at that moment because there are much more things to be done, not only on the sportive side but also on the non-sportive side in this moment in the club.
“So I’m throwing myself on all those things because I engage myself in that way in the summer and before the summer, in all those talks, because I believe so much in this club and the potential it can have for the future and to bring it back where it was before.”
But the fact is that Sunday’s slip up on the Rugby Park plastic was the final straw for some fans who were willing to forgive the collapse of last year’s title push or the repeated Old Firm skelpings Clement’s team have suffered since his appointment 12 months ago.
Clement is adamant his team remain on the right path under his leadership – but for those asking for firm answers on just when they can expect to arrive at their destination, well they’re unlikely to be too impressed with his reply.
“Those are good questions for everybody who’s never been a manager or a player because there are so many circumstances that you don’t have under control that you cannot say that,” said the bullish boss. There are players who come to a team and from the first day they feel good. There are other players who need three months, who need six months. They’re human beings — not machines. So you can ask these questions and I understand it. But there’s not one manager who can say [how a transfer will work out].”
The critics will point out that the former Club Brugge and Monaco gaffer was happy to put a timescale on his predictions earlier this summer when he forecast an improvement in performances by this stage of the season. The win over Malmo in their Europa League opener looked to back that up. But they now head into tonight’s showdown with Steaua Bucharest under major pressure after the early collapse of another title tile.
Quizzed on his form prophecy, Clement bit back: “I said the team will be better in October, November than it was in August. That’s also the case. It will be better also in September. I think everybody was really positive about the Malmo game, for example. That was better than in August. So we need to get to that level more consistently. And we’re working on it.”