It seems reasonable to assume Patrick Stewart will have had a very clear vision for what he wants the future for Rangers to look like.
Given his reputation as an operator of serious calibre, it stands to reason Stewart will have had it all mapped out inside his mind’s eye ever since he first agreed to take on the position of the club’s chief executive. But now that he’s getting his feet under the table – and seeing things from the inside – that whole picture for progression might well seem a great deal more blurred and fuzzy around the edges than it originally was.
Problem No.1 is right in front of the new man’s nose. He has a manager who has willingly allowed himself to become so blinded by sports science that he can’t see the damage he is doing to his team in the here and now as well as to his long term credentials. Philippe Clement had one job when Celtic slipped up and left a couple of precious league points behind at Tannadice a couple of weeks ago.
All the Belgian needed to focus on was getting in and out of Paisley and Fir Park with two post Christmas victories, just to ensure Thursday’s New Year visit from the champions was more than just another dead rubber derby. At that moment there was still a chance for Clement and his players to claw into the gap at the top of the table and provide an unexpected plot twist to a top flight campaign which had been hurtling along towards an inevitable end.
Three wins from three games over the festivities would have changed the whole complexion of Clement’s campaign, cut Celtic’s lead to just six points and set up a genuine head-to-head for the second half of the season. That was it. That was the remit. No more, no less.
But, quite astonishingly, Clement’s tendency to make the job a lot harder and more complicated than it needs to be led him to sit down with the boffins inside his medical department and put them in charge of his team selections.
And, having attended those games against St Mirren and Motherwell in person and witnessed the incomprehensible mess the manager made of each of them, Stewart may already be revisiting his carefully thought out road map towards recovery.
Clement’s miscalculations have had such a catastrophic impact that the new CEO wouldn’t be doing his own job right if the thought hadn’t entered his head. But there’s a chance, albeit a slim one, that the bungling Belgian might be just about to further complicate Stewart’s next step.
Because if he should finally chalk up a win over Brendan Rodgers, at the seventh attempt, then the waters around Ibrox will be even more muddied than they are right now. Which is why Stewart will require some head space over the course of these next few days while attempting to stop his football club from folding in on top of itself.
A support which had already made up its mind over Clement is now back on the brink of a full scale revolt against his
leadership, having called a temporary truce going into the season of goodwill. They might not be qualified sport scientists but they can count. They know another Celtic win in their own backyard will see Rodgers and his side open up a staggering 17 point lead at the top of the table.
And they’re not daft enough either to believe for a nanosecond that an unexpected victory for their own side might open the door to a potential comeback in the New Year. It’s finished and the punters know it. Clement and his medical geeks have made absolutely sure of it. The decisions they have made together may have been well intentioned and a result of drilling deep down into the data.
These people have a place in the modern game and their input can be invaluable when it comes to marginal gains. But that doesn’t mean the bigger picture should be completely disregarded.
Somehow, in their wisdom, they failed to work out that it was Clement who was in most danger of drifting into the red zone and, as a result, his credibility has been left completely and utterly trashed. Clement has to carry the can for his own part in this jaw dropping stupidity.
When he was being ordered to rest Nico Raskin at St Mirren and leave Vaclav Cerny on the bench against Motherwell, he ought to have turned around and questioned the sanity of the men in the white coats before ordering them out of his office.
And when one of them suggested it might be a good idea to start Cyriel Dessers on the basis that the misfiring No.9 had a full tank at Fir Park, Clement would have had reason to wonder if the backroom’s eggnog had been spiked. He didn’t though. He pulled out a pen and scored out the name of Hamza Igamane from his team sheet.
That, from nowhere, Kieran Dowell and Oscar Cortes were also thrown in from the start just compounded all of these errors and made Clement’s thinking appear to be hopelessly muddled. When any manager is forced into carrying out substantial running repairs to his original team, selection during the half time interval it’s an admission that he’s botched his own job from the start.
Clement had to do it in both of these crucial matches while his side was dropping five points. Yes, of course, the science department will have calculated that, by resting some key performers, the likes of Raskin, Cerny and Igamane would be close to optimum condition in time for Celtic’s visit.
What they failed to compute was that these decisions had a high probability of rendering the New Year derby as an entirely meaningless affair. Whatever happens on Thursday afternoon, it will be completely irrelevant to the destiny of this season’s title.
All that matters, from a Rangers point of view at least, is that Stewart has a clear sight of what must happen next. Because if the man at the wheel can’t see the woods for the trees heading into January then there will almost certainly be more carnage to come.