Philippe Clement: Sacked in the... evening

Good evening everyone, it's finally over.

The club announced at 9:20pm tonight that Clement has been relieved of his duties. Given his presser after yesterday's game it was really no surprise. The biggest surprise is that it's taken so long to do what was clearly the only course of action after 4/5 games this season.

His time at the club started positively, a 4-0 win against Hibs followed by a good unbeaten run that saw us get into Round of 16 in the Europa League by beating Real Betis away and win the League cup (his only trophy as Rangers manager) against Aberdeen. Even after a disappointing loss at Celtic Park we managed to go on another run that saw us claw back the points gap in the league to go top. The cracks first started to show when with the title in our own hands we failed to beat Celtic at Ibrox, lost to Ross County away and drew our game in hand at Dens Park.

The club threw everyone off by offering Clement a contract extension at the start of this season. The Belgian gladly accepted and it seemed like the club had committed long term.

A summer rebuild had taken place with lots of outgoings and incomings. But truthfully there were big signs of concern as Rangers lost out in the UCL qualifiers to Dynamo Kiev and suffered a 3-0 loss to Celtic in the seasons first Old Firm.

Aside from some solid European results earning us a top 8 finish in the new league phase. This season never really got going.

The same problems dogged Clement all season. His system leaves the midfield exposed, limits opportunities to create and relies heavily on moments of individual brilliance. There was a shift to a 442 that generated some great results, but when you looked past the surface, it too relied heavily on some great individual moments to beat teams.

A 3-0 home win over Celtic was a surprising bright spot this season for Clement. But truthfully it stood out as being an outlier in terms of performance and result. We never saw anything approaching that level domestically before or after.

A home loss to Queens Park in the Scottish Cup followed by an equally embarrassing home defeat to St Mirren spelled the end for Clement at Rangers.

Clements relationship with the fans soured months ago. As his tendency to trot out excuses and blindly back his own tactics in the face of some terrible results confirmed this was a man who didn't really understand Rangers football club.

When Michael Beale was sacked as Rangers manager in 2023, we were told that the two top candidates were Philippe Clement and Kevin Muscat. One had a clear system that had achieved incredible results in lesser leagues. One was labelled as "adaptable" with no clear footballing identity, but a respectable CV of trophies in Belgium.

Rangers went for the "adaptable" option, as they've always done. Now we are faced with that choice again, as the new owners will come in summer and have to decide on a successor. Let's hope that the new owners don't make those same mistakes, and have new personnel to guide them in their decision.