THE Rangers team isn’t anywhere near ruthless enough. But you’d better believe their manager is. No one should be fooled by Philippe Clement’s Dens Park post-match verdict when he talked up his tea…
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THE Rangers team isn’t anywhere near ruthless enough.
But you’d better believe their manager is.
No one should be fooled by Philippe Clement’s Dens Park post-match verdict when he talked up his team’s performance.
Least of all those players themselves.
The Belgian will know it wasn’t good enough, but he didn’t want to publicly throw anyone under the bus while there is still a chance of winning the title.
Even if it’s a slim chance at best.
No, whatever happens between now and the end of the season, there is a huge clear-out coming in the summer.
The problem Rangers have is there aren’t too many sellable assets there to bring in big fees.
And that means there will have to be more wheeling and dealing in the transfer market, which brings no guarantees.
That’s a huge worry because Celtic have the resources to spend big.
First, Giovanni van Bronckhorst was shown the door because of the group’s failings and then Michael Beale was sacked, too.
But that won’t happen this time.
Clement’s job is safe and he’s the one who will be seeing others off the premises.
That’s not a knee-jerk reaction to the results against Ross County and Dundee.
I’ve been saying this since Clement first arrived. There has to be drastic changes made to that under-performing squad.
The good work Clement did when he first came in to the Ibrox club only served to paper over the cracks. But they never really went away.
There was a momentum shift after Rangers lifted the Viaplay Cup and Celtic lost form.
But it was asking way too much to sustain a run of form from September until May with a group of players who were always going to revert back to type.
The only surprise is it took this long for it to happen.
But Clement himself probably hasn’t been surprised by it, which is why he’ll see no point in letting rip at his squad with just five games to go.
He probably sees the players are doing as well as they’re capable of. But he’ll know they’re simply not good enough.
The galling thing is that the Ross County game should have been a gimme.
I don’t mean that in any kind of disrespectful way, but Rangers should have been able to rock up in Dingwall and win if they did things correctly.
Yet there wasn’t the urgency or intensity required at this stage in the season.
It was the same in Dundee, with too many players just waiting for something to happen rather than making it happen.
That’s the biggest failing of this group of players.
Too many of the forwards are incapable of sniffing out chances from nothing.
There is no real creativity from middle to front from players whose job it is to provide that.
Look at Todd Cantwell and tell me what he brings to the table.
Tom Lawrence is a nice footballer, but he’s the same.
Then there’s Fabio Silva, someone who once cost £35million and will be getting paid a fortune.
I mean, wow. Just wow.
It’s not his fault about the fee or the wages someone is prepared to pay for him. But what is his fault is the number of times he’s caught on his heels.
I’ll cut Abdallah Sima some slack because he’s been out for so long with injuries.
But I said Cyriel Dessers wasn’t up to being the main striker at Rangers pretty much after taking one look at him and nothing has happened to change my mind.
And don’t start me on Rabbi Matondo, who needs the goals to be the width of the penalty box to hit the target on a regular basis.
You know what should be embarrassing these guys more than anything, though? It’s that the club’s right-back scores more goals than them.
I don’t care that a lot of James Tavernier’s strikes are penalties and free-kicks. He still contributes from open play and if I was one of the strikers at the club I’d be red-faced about that.
Just as I would be raging that a striker at another club — that isn’t Celtic — is banging in goals left, right and centre every week.
But do these guys care about that? I’m not so sure they do.
I’m not saying they have to be screaming at each other because I don’t buy that either.
In the Gers team I played in, our leaders were Allan McGregor, Davie Weir, Steven Davis, Pedro Mendes, Kenny Miller and our skipper, Barry Ferguson.
But Baz was probably the only one who would have a rant. The rest did their talking on the park by demanding the ball and leading by example. By making things happen out of nothing.
Kirk Broadfoot had his critics, but he wore his heart on his sleeve in that jersey and I don’t see enough of that in this team.
Clement could have said all that, but football has changed so much in the last few years with this generation.
But I’ll tell you this, the Gers supporters haven’t changed one bit during that time.
They demand the same now as they always have — and that’s always going to be the way of it.
