Rangers in crisis as Clement puts blame on Jack Butland | OneFootball

Rangers manager Philippe Clement’s outburst about Jack Butland was probably the first obvious sign of the boss’s loss of Rangers’ dressing room, even if his assessment might actually have been correct.

Speaking after the loss at Rugby Park, Clement saw fit to ‘throw Butland under the bus’ by blaming him for being in no man’s land for Killie’s winner, even if Scotland’s John Souttar far from carried himself in glory either.

Indeed, we could go further and argue this was Clement in fact getting his own back on Butland who criticised Rangers’ tactics v Lyon, in a well-documented swipe at an increasingly under pressure manager.

And if the man Clement described months ago as Rangers’ most important player and completely unsellable is now at odds with the boss, who is naming and shaming his errors in return, it’s game over for Clement.

As soon as the boss turns on the players in public, as soon indeed as they question himself in public in turn, it is game over.

It is only a matter of time before Philippe Clement leaves Rangers either by resignation or sacking, because once you have lost the dressing room and are criticising individual players blaming them for their errors, they’re not going to run through walls for you any more.

Clement has lost the trust of these players, he’s lost the dressing room and that cannot go on.

It’s much like how Michael Beale fell apart as well, a depressing end to what had seemed such a progressive appointment at the time, and Clement is finding his defenders among the Ibrox crowd to be an increasingly dwindling species.

To take a swing at Butland was just petty, effectively blaming him for Rangers’ loss, and while he wasn’t completely wrong, saying that in public but never casting a negative word against James Tavernier says a lot more.

We wouldn’t be shocked if Butland gets dropped now.

But that said, will Clement be in post long enough to get that chance?