The Happy Clappers’ guide to Rangers excuses | OneFootball

With Rangers’ Happy Clappers still content to clap happy for the rest of eternity, Ibrox Noise decided to put together a checklist of all their favourite excuses for the nonsense we’re seeing on the pitch under this ‘manager’, and pick them apart with all the disdain they deserve.

Suffice to say if you’re a ‘Blind Faith Loyal’ you’ll want to close this article around about now…

‘Give them a chance ffs’.

We do love this one. Variants on this are ‘give him a chance ffs’ or ‘give him time ffs’.

Aberdeen don’t need this chance, or this time, with their completely new squad and manager, but apparently £16M of summer investments at Rangers do. Happy Clappers would give players and managers centuries because they are not willing to critically evaluate what they are seeing. The only exception that maybe justifies this stance was Borna, who took 13 months to spring to life at Rangers. Difference was he was already a borderline world class Croatia international who just wasn’t showing that at Ibrox. But we knew it was there. Bajrami has already shown his talent, and we can all tell Barron is a player. But Clement and the team as a whole ‘need a chance ffs’.

‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’

This is a new one we’re seeing from the Clappers, similar in ways to the first one but trying to suggest it takes time to rebuild Rangers. Well, Dick Advocaat rebuilt Rangers, admittedly with money, and that was that. Immediately the best team in Scotland. Walter rebuilt Rangers with 3 freebies and £2M Kevin Thomson in January 2007. Instantly the best in Scotland. But you know, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Well… it could be if you have the right tools. But Clement and many of the players he brought in aren’t the right tools.

‘Look what he inherited’.

This is one of our favourites, because it is such steam-boiled nonsense. Why? Beale actually signed a lot of decent players, but didn’t manage them at all well. The only players he signed that really didn’t click were Kieran Dowell (whatever happened to him), Jose Cifuentes and Sam Lammers. The rest all worked (even Danilo) and have played big roles since.

BUT even more tellingly, Clement actually did BETTER with what he inherited than what he then built. The first four months, despite the bad results v Celtic, were notably better ‘with what he inherited’ than March onwards. Ironically the more of his own stamp Clement has actually put on Rangers, such as those shocking January signings (or his bad management of them), the worse we’ve got. We are now categorically abysmal and way worse than we were under Beale. Anyone denying that is plain deluded.

‘Who would do a better job?’

Anyone who understands Rangers, what it takes to win at this club, and who grasps the must-win ethos in a way Clement doesn’t. Rangers have had many managers who had a shoestring budget – Alex McLeish is a major example. He had absolutely no money, but he won the treble and Helicopter Sunday. He generated cash eventually through the £9M sale of Boumsong and got some money for £8.5M Barry Barry, but he knew how to manage on pennies and he signed many great players for the club.

But that’s the past – who today? We daren’t propose any names, we got the last two wildly wrong in Beale and Clement. We know some say Derek McInnes, and he does tick a lot of boxes. Rangers man, knows the importance of must-win, can build good teams. Has worked miracles at Killie and this season has learned fast that Killie simply don’t have the resources to cope in Europe and domestically at the same time.

But we’re not proposing McInnes, just saying he wouldn’t be any worse than the man we have at the moment.

The reality is until Rangers change manager this isn’t going to improve – Clement is the clear wrong man and admittedly more and more fans are seeing this.