Rangers just can’t keep sacking the manager | OneFootball

When Rangers fans discuss Philippe Clement (whose approval rating among Rangers fans still remains a solid 76% down from 93%) the frequent response from those who don’t want to see the manager relieved of his position is ‘you can’t keep on sacking managers’.

There’s a lot of merit in this – it is feeling like Groundhog Day at Ibrox, when New Saviour comes in, saves the day, then eventually loses momentum and is given his P45.

It probably began with Giovanni van Bronckhorst, and how poorly he was treated by fans and board alike – when the wheels came off thanks to a dire injury crisis and not being backed enough for Rangers’ Champions League campaign, the buck ‘stopped with him’.

It always does, and the manager always (should) pay for the bad results.

Michael Beale then came in, ‘saved the day’ (again), before wrecking his first Old Firm with terrible substitutions and ending up with a draw, while also losing the League Cup final. He still kept momentum in the league though, and it wasn’t till the following season that Beale’s apparent Midas Touch deserted him and Rangers and he agreed to go their separate ways.

Then it was Clement, who had the same brilliant start as Gio and Beale, but when his wheels came off in their own way, fans had had enough of bidding farewell to ‘yet another manager’.

And this is the psyche now – Clement is a terrible boss, a really bad manager for this football club, and the majority of fans do actually recognise this now. But they don’t want to fire him because we’re sick of a conveyer belt of bosses.

The reality?

There’s nothing wrong with sacking boss after boss, per se. There is, however, everything wrong with a recruitment process that’s hiring the wrong ones.

Rangers would not need to sack bosses if the board had any clue how to hire, who to hire, and how to support.

You find the right man, you won’t need to keep sacking the managers.

The right man has been found many times in recent decades by Rangers. Walter, Dick, Souness, Eck, and we will even include Steven Gerrard. These were all great managers who won things for us, regardless of the resources they had. Eck especially had very few, but won a treble and managed to qualify for the last 16 of the Champions League. A Scottish first. You can do things without money.

Clement? He’s not a patch on any of these guys, despite being a winner in his homeland. He’s been an unmitigated shambles since his wheels came off in March, and some (most) of his conduct since then has been shocking. Pedro level. His signings have been diabolical. Fabio Silva ‘ffs’.

But fans don’t want to keep hiring and firing, and we do get that. They want to give this guy a real run at things and time to build his Rangers.

We on Ibrox Noise massively fear the repercussions of letting Clement run Rangers for medium to long term, but we also understand the urge not to keep dumping bosses.

It’s a damned if you do damned if you don’t.