So, Philippe Clement watched a docuseries on Manchester United’s Champions League-winning side of 1999 and saw parallels between them and a Rangers team that couldn’t get through this year’s first set of qualifiers, did he?
Sounds a bit like being stuck in a dark room for a couple of days with a dicky tummy and emerging from the isolation feeling connected to Nelson Mandela because you sense he went through something broadly similar on Robben Island. A delusion, really.
Yes, United lost the Charity Shield 3-0 to Arsenal back then and drew their first couple of league games before marching on to a historic treble. However, they had Andy Cole, Dwight Yorke, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Teddy Sheringham up front to get them out of bother.
Rangers have Cyriel Dessers, who has all the calmness and composure in pressurised situations of a cornered raccoon, and Danilo, who only appeared on the radar this week because the manager found himself in the absurd situation of having to answer questions about the injury-hit Brazilian limping out of the Hampden tunnel on a club video later hauled off the internet when folk started asking why he looked like a pensioner doing the crip walk.
Oh, yes, they’ve got Hamza Igamane too. You know, the Moroccan geezer. The fella a club so skint they need to sell off their deadwood before they can buy anyone else spent a reported £1.5million on — only to find he can’t even get into the B-squad because, in Clement’s own words, ‘he’s never trained or played physically at this level and he comes out of a holiday too, so we need to build him up’.
Don’t remember much of that chat within United’s first-team squad as they pretty quickly got their act together and gathered momentum. They had Beckham, Giggs, Butt, Stam, Solskjaer, the Nevilles, Roy Keane.
Clement’s attempts to paint a rosy picture at Rangers are admirable, if a little laughable
Balogun, Tavernier, Barron, McCausland and Dessers are no match for Giggs, Beckham et al
Manchester United’s Champions League-winning heroes celebrate at the Nou Camp in 1999
Rangers have Ben Davies, Tom Lawrence, Kieran Dowell, Rabbi Matondo and Scott Wright. Not exactly like for like.
There was a bit of off-field turmoil with United being the subject of a failed takeover, for sure, but they were playing in their own stadium, at least, and were capable of offering guarantees about away tickets for big games.
Turning out at Hampden in front of less than 20,000 people, as they did against St Johnstone last night, is the least of Rangers’ problems, though. Just when you think the shambles swallowing their campaign whole can’t get much worse, they go through a week like the one just gone.
They bagged their new marketing man after two days because it turned out he had a history of putting pictures of himself on social media knocking around Parkhead in Celtic gear and posting about ‘Huns’.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer celebrates his dramatic late goal with Dwight Yorke and Ronny Johnsen
In sending millions up in smoke by going out of Europe to Dynamo Kyiv, Clement left new signing Vaclav Cerny on the bench. He said it was because the fitness team said he could only play 45 minutes. Yet, he introduced the Czech at the interval — putting him into a situation where he would have had to play 75 had the tie gone into extra-time.
Clement made much of the club’s stupid injury list last term and assures the world that good work is going on behind-the-scenes to solve it. Yet, ahead of the St Johnstone clash, they had five guys out or struggling. Four games in.
It’s been so bad that you could almost forget about Ryan Jack appearing on a podcast to talk about how Alfredo Morelos turned up late for training on the eve of the 2019 League Cup final — and admitting the Colombian was ‘a great guy, but didn’t give a f***’, did he?’.
Ah, how those of us who thought it might be rather a nice idea to take £16m from Lille for the errant striker rather than let him run down his contract and leave for free were castigated at the time.
New Algerian striker Hamza Igamane has much fitness work to do, reported Clement
Of course, plenty of the people who allowed moody Morelos to do what he liked — who stood by and let it all happen — are still at Rangers. They were there last season as the league was kindly wrapped in a big green-and-white bow. That’s why Jack’s intervention was helpful.
It reminds us that the utter mess the club are in has been a long time in the making with so many of the current cast members actively involved.
Chairman John ‘Best In Class’ Bennett is at a point where people have simply stopped listening — and no wonder after his last, tedious 22-minute tossing of word salads. He’s burnt his boats. The guys on the board don’t have the answers to this. Because they created it.
From refusing to back Steven Gerrard the way he desired after stopping 10-In-A-Row to letting players such as Morelos, Ryan Kent, Borna Barisic and John Lundstram walk for nothing, the running of the business has been unfathomable.
Ryan Jack’s frank admission that Alfredo Morelos’ attitude wasn’t right hardly came as a shock
In giving the manager’s job to Michael Beale after he’d hung over Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s shoulder like the Grim Reaper — turning up in the Louden Tavern and the directors’ box for an Aberdeen game when the Dutchman was battling to save his job — they exhibited perhaps their most costly misjudgment of character.
Beale was never, ever a Rangers manager. And he should never, ever have been allowed to blow £21m unmonitored on rubbish in the transfer market last summer after the similarly unsuitable sporting director Ross Wilson bailed out.
Of course, there’s no money at all now, oddly enough. A CEO might be on the way in the shape of Jim Gillespie from St Mirren, but there’s no head of academy. No sporting director. No idea when Ibrox might be open after work on the Copland Stand. No answers to very much, really.
Particularly the key question of why Clement was given a new contract and a payrise when he was on a run of seven wins in 19 competitive games before Saints.
The appointment of Beale as manager was one of the worst decisions the club have ever made
At least the punters have woken up and are talking of protest. As they should. We should have got to that point some time ago when it emerged that management figures at the club had told the in-house Fan Advisory Board on June 17 that ‘everything is going according to plan at the minute’ on the Copland rebuild — three days before admitting that a problem with getting steel from China meant they didn’t actually have anywhere to play, after all.
They must think their supporters’ heads button up the back. If Clement really finds hope in watching programmes about Man United’s 1998-99 campaign when gazing out over the binfire he’s in charge of, he’s further gone than many suspect — way beyond claiming a late equaliser in an Old Firm derby on the road to blowing the title makes you ‘moral winners’.
The only real link with Rangers and Manchester United this week came when it emerged lawyers told Lord Braid in the Court of Session that a £9.5m compensation claim over kit deals brought by Elite Sports Group against the Ibrox club was to be settled privately in ‘Fergie Time’ — a reference to Sir Alex’s alleged propensity for pressuring referees to add on extra time at Old Trafford.
Of course, it turns out the claim hasn’t been settled at all. It is destined to run longer than The Mouse Trap. Yet another never-ending reminder of past failings.
Clement clambers clumsily over an advertising board to party with a pocket of his club’s fans
If anything, Rangers are more like the United of now than 1999. Somehow sporting a cup in the cupboard, they’re a shadow of their former selves, cutting costs, alienating fans and sticking with a manager whose record would have got anyone else the sack.
Erik ten Hag’s team won their opening league fixture on Friday, though. Rangers are disappearing down the plughole. In hindsight, their story of hubris and catastrophe has few parallels at all.
Idah’s price tag doesn’t fit with the Celtic model
Brendan Rodgers says Adam Idah is worth every penny of the £8.5million — potentially £9.5m — committed to bring him to Celtic permanently.
He also made a comment about how you can’t win when you start spending money and people crying out for new signings suggest it is too much. That’s fine. Time will tell how good an investment Idah is. However, at this juncture in the 23-year-old’s career, there is a case to be made that the price seems a little inflated.
Rodgers’ point that spending £18m on three players at £6m rather than £2m each on nine makes perfect sense. Celtic should have carried on down that route some time ago. It stands to reason that paying more for greater quality should heighten the odds of bigger transfer fees incoming further down the line.
It’s just that it’s not easy to figure out what makes Idah worth just short of eight figures in the first place. He’s heading for 24 and couldn’t nail down a regular game for Norwich in the English Championship. If Celtic had moved to buy him permanently in January, you’d have expected the fee to be considerably less.
Adam Idah may well rip it up on the domestic front, but Europe is another matter altogether
Yes, he did do well on loan. He’s a good player, but does he have the quality to worry Champions League opposition?
If the reported 15 per cent sell-on fee demanded by Norwich is correct, the champions are going to have to haul in £15m-plus down the line just to turn a modest profit. And that’s not counting the Irishman’s wages.
Truth is, it felt like a political signing, this one. One to show disgruntled fans the club means business. One to pacify Rodgers, who called out those above him last term following a disastrous summer window with Peter Lawwell’s boy running recruitment and is now back in a position of strength.
There’s bags of dough there to get these other £6m-plus talents he wants. It will be interesting to study their pedigree with a view to how much they might bring in when it comes to selling in future.
Idah’s arrival silenced some criticism and will certainly help maintain domestic dominance, but it just doesn’t feel like it fits into Celtic’s professed recruitment model. It feels, whether Rodgers agrees or not, like they paid over the odds just to keep the peace.
German retreat at Pars is proof fan power rules
Dunfermline’s German backers have put their shareholding up for sale because they feel the club’s fans are getting impatient. They think punters being unhappy over a poor start to the season makes long-term planning impossible.
It’s been a worrying start to the season at East End Park, but Pars fans will stick by their club
The Hamburg-based group have been involved for four years now, though. And it would have been nice if they had shown a little more self-reflection instead of pointing the finger at supporters doing what supporters do.
Where the Pars go next after some alarming financial figures is anyone’s guess, but one thing’s for sure. It will be the punters who ride to the rescue again if it all goes belly-up. And if the Germans can’t accept that bread-and-butter fans are always going to want results instead of endless talk of jam tomorrow, they really are in the wrong game.
Running a club in Scottish football is not for the faint-hearted.