The fickle finger of fate poked Philippe Clement in the eye prior to meeting Celtic but resulted in no loss of vision.
A daily diet of denial when it came to losing important players to injury was made light of by the Belgian, while Celtic made heavy weather of taking any advantage of Rangers ’ supposedly reduced strength. The only injury suffered by the Rangers manager was a pang of regret. His team wiped the floor with Celtic on Thursday and yet remained a distant second in the league table because of their inability to win in places like Kilmarnock, Paisley and Motherwell.
A form of travel sickness which will have to be dealt with at Easter Road this afternoon in front of a full ground and a live television audience. A win hints at a renewal of Clement’s previously beleaguered squad. Any loss of points undoes, to one extent or another, the good of the win against the tea team from across the road on the other side of the city. The basic obligation, given the twelve noon start to the match in Edinburgh, is for Rangers to reduce Celtic’s lead in the championship to eight points and see if that spooks anyone when Brendan Rodgers ’ team kick off against St Mirren later in the day.
The scale of Clement’s win in the Old Firm derby was too impressive to be dismissed merely as the law of averages dictating that it had to happen sometime. But the match that comes next has to offer evidence of a corner having been turned.
Clement’s popularity in the opinion polls has gone up and down to the extent that nobody really knows whether some people of a sarcastic nature are glad he beat Celtic because it keeps him in a job. Or whether his approval rating has finally taken on a stable standing through public confidence in him being firmly re-established.
Today, in the city that houses the Scottish parliament, Clement’s case comes under the umbrella of Article Six of the European Convention on Human Rights. This states that, “Everyone has the right to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time.”
The Belgian’s time is now. He has been viewed as everything from a liability to a visionary, with several stops in between to question his judgement of a player and his powers of team selection while under the influence of a bevvy of sports scientists.
All Philippe can do now is keep on winning and see where the rest of the season takes him, while the public reserve the right to withdraw the praise they first thought of where his future is concerned. That’s how the management game works.
If he doesn’t win today against Hibs, Clement goes straight back down to the status of Belgian waffler. That’s how the fan game works.