Jackson Does It Again With Another Classic: A Celtic Cup Final Victory Turned Into An Ibrox “Battle Won.”

Well, it’s that time of the week again; Jackson time, and I am doing this one today because as usual some of this stuff is braindead … and besides, it’s the last one for a while now that the season is over and it’s always possible that The Record either goes out of business or sacks this guy before the next one kicks off … what a choker either of those scenarios would be, eah?

Here goes with the headline then folks.

Brittle Rangers lose the war and Clement must break nasty habit or risk becoming collateral damage – Keith Jackson

There I thought it was a game of football at the weekend, not a war. But yes, the sentiment is one I agree with. He’s in real trouble at this point.

Our man has his say on the Hampden showpiece that saw the Hoops continue their derby dominance.

Nobody would call that a showpiece. It was a poor game. With the sub-headline now also out of the way, let’s jump right into the mind of Scotland’s most notorious sports journalist. Brace yourselves.

They won the battle but still contrived to lose the war.

They won the battle? This will be the club from Ibrox, then? What battle was that? Does he mean the Scottish Cup Final which we just watched? Because I could swear to God that our name is the one on the trophy. I know Ibrox floats on a sea of this reality bending stuff, but honest to God, if he thinks they were the team that deserved to win that game he is off his nut.

Which, in retrospect, sums up the abject state of a Rangers side which is overdue for some serious and permanent dismantling. Because even when Philippe Clement’s players are following the tactical commands of their manager to the letter, they still can’t quite be trusted to win the matches which are there to be won. Where Jurgen Klopp once famously branded his Liverpool side mentality monsters, Clement’s current collection are more like mentality meringues. Brittle, fragile and with a soft centre.

Not bad, I guess. I mean his jokes are usually crap and this one is no exception, but then this is the weekend when we’ve been treated to Gary Keown’s attempts at humour and so next to that this is Kevin Bridges Live At The Apollo. As to his general point about players following tactical commands, I actually have no idea what he’s talking about. Clement has one plan only; hoof the ball up the pitch and hope someone runs onto it. A trained chimp could follow that. People keep on looking for some evidence of genius in this guy in the same way they were looking for some in The Mooch and it just wasn’t there. It’s not here either. It’s like that chess analogy I sometimes use; a really good player facing an amateur will sometimes assume that there is some hidden pattern in their play, because that’s what they are used to in their opponents … but sometimes incoherence is exactly what it looks like, with no underlying structure to it at all. That’s what this is.

So while they were the better team throughout Saturday’s Scottish Cup Final, the fact that they left Hampden with another second prize means this side’s cycle has come to a fitting end. With another punctured tyre. Let’s begin with some plaudits though because the truth of the matter is the best players on the pitch were all wearing Rangers shirts. From the emergency centre back pairing of Ben Davies and Leon Balogun, who hardly put a foot wrong, the outstanding double act of Mohamed Diomande and Nicolas Raskin in midfield, to Todd Cantwell who stepped up onto the big stage and ran himself into the ground having presumably eaten one shooshburger too many during the week.

A paragraph of such stupidity that I find it amazing even by his standards. The best players on the park were all in their colours? Is that a joke? The better team throughout? They were played off the park in the first half. Absolutely played off the park. Give all the plaudits you want Jackson, that entire paragraph is delusional rubbish. The attempted rehabilitation of that defensive pairing is hilarious. The idea that Raskin was brilliant is absurd. Diomande is another triumph of hype. And don’t even get me started on Cantwell; he “stepped up onto the big stage”? This reads more like a parody than a serious attempt to write about the game.

All of them were head and shoulders above anything Celtic could muster on a day when it seemed the league celebrations had emptied their tank. But that’s the trouble with this Rangers side. Too often, in the games which define a season, their best just isn’t good enough. Clement, for his part, was also a star performer in the tactical jousting with Brendan Rodgers. Indeed, the Ibrox boss could not have wished for his plan to come together with such emphatic effect.

They were absolutely not “head and shoulders about anything Celtic could muster.” I said last night that Alastair Johnston was the best player on the pitch and I meant it. Carter Vickers was also excellent. But our midfield more than matched theirs without being brilliant. In a sense this pleases me; we read variations of this garbage all the way through the summer, especially in relation to Raskin and Cantwell and neither of them would get in our midfield on a bad day … on top of that, Clement was a “star performer” in his tactical joust with Rodgers? To paraphrase Oliver Stone here; “we’re through the looking glass, people … white is black and black is white.” I repeat my question from earlier; whose name is on the Scottish Cup? Did Jackson write this, in a blue funk, when the game was still in progress and before Idah got the winner?

Having failed to win any of his first three derbies, Clement had to come up with a curveball of some sort on the basis that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while hoping for different results. But what he came up with did catch a few by surprise, none more so than Cantwell who was trusted with a starting place even though the man in charge has made a habit of forcing him to sit the big ones out.

Only one thing counts here. One. Did it work? Did they win? No, it’s four games against Rodgers and no wins. Three losses. Costly losses. A league and cup double for the Celtic manager. The idea that Rodgers has been outmanoeuvred here is completely ridiculous.

Ridvan Yilmaz also made the Belgian’s starting XI just days after breaking down in tears at a confessional in the manager’s office, during which he all but ruled himself out of contention with the latest in a succession of niggles. And then there was the curious case of Raskin anchoring the Rangers midfield and being chosen for that role ahead of John Lundtrsam, despite being frozen out of the first team pretty much consistently since his countryman arrived in the same city.

The famous “crying” scene. A work of fiction that deserves to stand alongside Nacho Novo turning down Celtic. It will probably not inspire a dreadful book with a terrible name but it’s a beauty nonetheless. There was also nothing “curious” about Lundstram being dropped. He is a liability. Had the game lasted another 60 seconds he might well have faced VAR review for his psychotic lunge on Greg Taylor at the end. He was dropped because he has both feet out the Ibrox door and Clement was desperate to have players on the pitch who actually want to be there. Jackson gets one thing right here; Raskin hasn’t been in Clement’s plans and he still isn’t.

Yes, this was Clement’s way of mixing things up and attempting to find answers to the same puzzles which have been bamboozling Rangers over these last three years.

You’d think they’d have played better in the first half if this was such genius, wouldn’t you? Jackson simply does not appear to be grasping how this stuff works.

Like how to stop Callum McGregor from dominating proceedings every time he’s confronted by someone wearing a blue shirt. The solution? Confront him with two of them. It was Cantwell and Cyriel Dessers who took it in turns to shut Celtic’s captain down when he was roaming around in deep areas attempting to get on the ball and get his side moving forward.

What? What game did he watch? Dessers was hooked at half time, and Celtic ran the whole midfield show in the first half. As to Cantwell, I have no idea what he was doing for most of that game, but he wasn’t closing anybody down. If there was a tactical plan he certainly wasn’t following it, because he drifted about the pitch like a fan who had somehow gotten on in an Ibrox top … I thought he was wholly ineffectual, like playing with a man down. The Ibrox fans as a whole were massively underwhelmed by him. The idea that he and Dessers played McGregor out of the first half, where we ran rings round them, is so absurd I have to believe someone’s slipped Jackson a copy of the wrong match. If he watched the same one as us, he’s been slipped something else.

And, with their main cog all choked up, the Celtic machine began to cough and splutter more than most could have expected. For long spells during the opening 45 minutes, the champions simply couldn’t settle into any kind of stride. And even when the misfiring Dessers was replaced by Abdallah Sima at half time, Clement’s strategical blueprint stayed in place.

Again, utter rubbish. Celtic controlled the first half completely. Our moves broke down in the final third. But the midfield was so obviously superior to the Ibrox one that I feel like an idiot having to write a retort to this stuff. And “strategical blueprint”? What a grammatical car-crash that phrase is. The lack of formal education seeps through again.

It was a combination of Sima and Cantwell at first. And when Cantwell’s race was eventually run, midway through the second half, Scott Wright came on to occupy the same spaces. Every now and then – albeit not nearly often enough – McGregor would break into a gap and try to get his team functioning.

Scott Wright! Yeah, he showed up brilliantly, didn’t he? Bravo to Clement for his introduction! His mistake led to the goal. So that worked out well.

In fact, with Matt O’Riley and Reo Hatate also getting outnumbered and outmanoeuvred in the middle of the pitch, Celtic were as close to being there for the taking as they have been since way back when the season began and Rodgers was rummaging around the cupboards of Lennoxtown in search of eleven fit players.

Yawn. More Jackson attempts to be funny. Thank God this is the last time I’ll have to endure this for a while. I think O’Riley and Hatate have had better games, but the idea that our midfield was outclassed is simply not even close to being accurate.

They were flat, lifeless and devoid of any kind of attacking spark until sub Paulo Bernardo shrugged off an exhausted looking Raskin to let fly from 30 yards with a swerving shot which seemed to completely deceive Jack Butland on its way towards goal.

Hahaha it seemed to deceive him did it? No more than he has evidently deceived the whole of the Scottish sporting press, into thinking they are watching an England international here. There is a reason that prior to his free transfer that this guy had been loaned out more than a library copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. See my Joe Hart piece from last night for further on that subject.

Butland moved too far to his right hand side and then, in his panic, managed only to fist the ball into the path of Adam Idah for the goal that won the cup. It was an extraordinary moment given that Butland has hardly made a mistake since he arrived in Glasgow last summer. And now here he was, throwing one in when it mattered most of all.

Hardly made a mistake! Ha! Even if the rest of this column were not filled to the brim with absurd observations this one would have sunk it like a stone. Ridiculous.

Usually, Butland has been saving the rest of his teammates. But, on this occasion, he malfunctioned at the very moment the rest of them were finally carrying out their own duties with impressive efficiency. And yet they did what they always seem to do. They found a way to lose a match they simply had to win. Which is precisely why Clement will have to be brutal this summer when he begins the process of overhauling his squad.

Impressive efficiency. Like I said, I love it. If he was “impressed” by their performance then he’s on another planet. This really is, to paraphrase Jim Steinman, like “looking for a ruby in a mountain of rocks.” Trying to find positives here is, to paraphrase another great artist, returning to Oliver Stone again, this is like “picking gnat shit out of pepper.” Long may it continue.

The system he came up with at the weekend was only let down by the quality of the individuals within it. And, in the final third of the pitch, this Rangers side continually comes up short. Fabio Silva, of course, will now become Wolves’ problem again and it remains a matter of mystery why the Premier League outfit shelled out more than £30m on him in the first place.

The system he came up with delivered another loss. And Silva? There are two mysteries about him and Jackson only wants to explore one of them. Sure, we all know he’s not worth £30 million and never was, and never will be … but the “strategical” genius signed him when even the merest glance at his stats showed that there was nothing to the guy. The “strategical” genius and his club only saw the grabby headlines about bringing in someone with that price tag. They did the same thing with Amado Diallo a couple of years ago … they never learn. They chase headlines and bling and only grasp what was obvious too late for it to matter.

Dujon Sterling – not for the first time – made a massive contribution on the other side of the pitch where he bullied Greg Taylor until running out of steam. But Clement’s persistence with playing the Englishman out of position in an attacking role is doing him no favours at all. He should be allowed to start next season as the first choice right back, even if captain James Tavernier is not lured away by the promise of oil stained riches in Saudi Arabia.

If James Tavernier ends up in Saudi Arabia I’ll eat my keyboard. This is a complete fantasy, based on the idea, I think, that Steven Gerrard owes the Ibrox club something and so will gamble his club’s money on a signing that will not progress them one bit. The point about Dujon Sterling is just as mad as the rest of it. This is another triumph of Ibrox hype. That the manager can’t even decide what his natural position is tells you all you need to know.

Tavernier’s time has come and gone. A significant servant and a phenomenal contributor but the poster boy for the culture of close-but-not-cigar merchants that Rangers have become during his time at the club. And Dessers also fits into that category. A man who has scored 22 goals in his first season but who should have hit double that amount. If he had done, then Rangers would not have had to settle for just a League Cup from this campaign.

And if Keith Jackson could write he would not be working at The Daily Record. If I were a stone lighter and played in a rock band, I too would have been in the running to date Sophie Turner. In the running. Not necessarily a realistic shout. But that’s what “if” gets you, you can make it whatever you want, and dream any dream you can come up with.

Now that it’s all over, the truth is that fleeting success was just another battle won in a war that was ultimately lost. It’s a nasty habit that Clement must break before he too becomes collateral damage.

Good God. Since we’re ending for the summer, you might as well end with a bang, Keithy, right? The bang of jaws hitting the floor at how awful that final paragraph is. First, it’s a messy piece of writing. Secondly, it’s stupid. Because there was no “success” to be had here, fleeting or otherwise. And nor, as I said at the start, was there any “battle won.” For the third and final time, whose name is on the cup today? So where was the success? Where was the win? All they have today is a bunch of excuses, another dollop of pain, a hard luck story and the myth that they got less than what they deserved.

Trust Jackson to base an entirely article on something not rooted in reality. The entire piece is constructed around the premise that Clement is a tactical genius, that his midfield was magnificent, that his defence was brilliant and that this translated into some kind of moral victory (they like their moral victories at Ibrox; we prefer actual ones with actual honours, as silly as that sounds) … and as mad as that is, he does understand it because his more general point is that the squad needs to be torn down and rebuilt and that Clement himself has a lot to answer for.

Like I said, if you go into a Jackson piece expecting consistency, logic, common sense or insight or even just basic facts, you’re in the wrong place right off the bat. This is classic Jackass. This is why, in my own way, I am going to miss him until next season starts.