Over the last few days my focus has been almost entirely on our own club, and that was correct and proper when we’ve been dragging our feet on signings, something I hope we’re no longer doing as the rebuild finally gets into gear. I make no apology for it. When this club is letting us all down and needs a kick in the backside, it’s the job of the fans to give it one.
But the truth is, as my mate Matt said on the podcast yesterday, even if we sign the keeper and the two loanees from last season we’ll have stood still, but we’ll have stood still with the title winning team. Which is not the place we want to be, but not a bad place to be either. We’re still playing at our own stadium when the season starts for one thing.
The mood across the city is as low as it’s been in years. Remember a few months ago when they were talking big about how this was going to be the summer they put us in our place? Sadly for them that would have required winning the league … and they didn’t.
That was when they were making big promises about spending the money on Sima and finding out what it would cost to keep Silva for another year. And I’m not even talking here about the fans; this was the manager himself, old Manneken Piss, back when he still thought he would have money to spend. Lunacy, yes, but they were all onboard for the ride.
When he spoke to the media the other day, he sounded thoroughly scunnered.
Some of his comments were definitely not music to the ears of the fans.
Not so much the stuff about the club being skint, although I’m sure that was a hammer blow to the dafter ones who believed all the lies. But the stuff about how this wasn’t what he had “expected” when he arrived at Ibrox in October would have troubled them and and the bit about how he still sees their assorted underachievers as part of the first team squad will have been absolutely terrifying to those who’ve bought season tickets.
And there was a warning to the board as well. An unmistakable one about how he’s once again drawing a line in the sand when it comes to Jack Butland; he is not to be sold unless it’s for such a seriously big fee that he can rebuild the team with it.
We all laughed, I’m sure, at the £30 million price tag.
But in fact, there’s a serious point here.
He’s telling the board that Butland isn’t to be sold at all. He knows nobody is going to pay that fee. That he’s putting such a ludicrous number on it is his way of saying that it’s not to be done. I wonder if he’s had that assurance. I wonder if he believes it.
What was he told in October? Was he lied to?
That’s clearly what he is suggesting happened. Lied to or at the very least misled. I am guessing that he’s got more information about the Hampden situation than most of the fans, so it’s probably no longer a surprise to him that the people who hired him don’t always give folks the full picture … you just wonder at what point he found out that it applies to him just as much as those in the stands.
He has embarrassed much of the media with his contention that the players he has signed up until now are not of the quality he requires to improve the team. How many of the hacks ran drooling fan-boy, pro-Ibrox garbage about them?
All of them? Some of them had the AC Milan reserve just one step shy of being the next Franco Baresi. They had Jefe as a future Real Madrid player.
Their own manager, the guy who allegedly signed them, has refuted all of it.
His neck is already on the block due to Rodgers absolutely owning him in the last campaign.
He knew he had to start this coming season perfectly.
It’s only weeks away, and he has to fall back on the same band of misfits who failed him in the last one.
What’s more, all those he wants to move on already know it, that he’s got no confidence in them and that their utility to him and to the club is as saleable assets … if anyone stupid enough can be found to buy them.
Dessers. Lammers. Lawrence. Hagi. Cantwell. Raskin. Tavernier. Goldson. Davies.
Every one of those guys knows their boss doesn’t rate them. Some of them have openly fallen out with him. We know Goldson isn’t a fan. We know Cantwell isn’t. We know Tavernier found out he was being replaced as captain when he read it in The Daily Record.
They have offered Dessers to half the clubs in Italy, and Lammers to every club in Holland.
Hagi? Probably every club in Europe has gotten a fax about his availability, half of them sent from Ibrox and the other by his more famous daddy who never ceases telling the world what a legend his son could be if only he wasn’t so overlooked.
The Cantwell saga is hilarious.
Offered to a club in Italy behind his back only for the email to be sent to the wrong person and for it to make the news, where I am guessing that like Tavernier is where he first found out what was going on. And he was such a joy to have around the club before that, right? He must bring with him his own rash of dressing room issues, in spite of happy-clapper reports about how great a DJ he is in there.
Most of these guys are on huge salaries, amongst the biggest in the league. Finding people willing to take them off their hands when everyone knows they are dreck is going to be murderously hard, but Clement’s made it clear that until someone does, he can’t spend more money.
And even as all this comes down on him, the future transfer kitty, even if he does manage to sell, is being eaten away by the stadium problem, the looming Elite case and whatever other issues they have behind the scenes which they aren’t sharing with anyone.
In the meantime, the stadium fiasco continues to gather pace with the local resident’s associations down at Hampden absolutely furious over the lack of consultation with them. I know the area well, it’s in my neck of the woods, and the last thing the place needed was an influx of the Ibrox Twatterati pissing in the gardens every second week.
But this is who they are as a club.
Entitled. Arrogant. Elitist.
And shambolic.
This is the club to which Philipe Clement has tied himself, and his future, and as I said in a piece last season, Scottish football is not the sunlit lowlands where players and managers come to relax and wind down their careers; this is a killing field, where the ground is hard, stony and stained with blood.
His shallow grave is already dug, and Rodgers has the frame for another Ibrox managerial trophy carved, set and waiting for him to place the order.
If the Ibrox boss sounds pissed off right now it’s that the truth of this is slowly dawning on him as he surveys the wreckage of this summer, which only a few months ago he believed he’d spend luxuriating in the warm glow of triumph.
Instead, it’s a nightmare from which he cannot awake.
Well, not to worry old son, Rodgers will soon put you out of your misery.
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Their problems do not make me sad, however, our club are running to standstill and the fact we won the league last season is a memory. For spells last year we really struggled and the football on show, never mind the results, were abysmal. A new keeper, Bernardo and Idah isn’t enough. We need a left back to help Taylor out, an experienced midfielder to come in and an experienced CB wouldn’t go amiss.
We’ve all probably been there at some point in our careers,
when we have been significantly lied to during an interview.
Then you join and find out the truth.
You are initially annoyed with yourself:
then really annoyed with the organisation.
All trust abruptly lost, you simply have to move on ASAP.
IF sevco did tell fibs to Clement in October, then their season is over, already!
…and their stadium shambles is just the icing on the cake.
🙂
Ibrox in meltdown and we’ve finally signed someone. What a time to be alive. HH
I don’t think Clemont manages another game at Ibrox. He appears to be going down the same route as GVB where he is no longer willing to toe the line of everything is rosie & we should all be partying with excitement. To give him credit I think when this happens it’s usually the sign of a manager who actually has some brains about him & has some professional pride. Maybe he really believed it last season hence the crazy statements after games but summer has come round & reality has slapped him like a motherfucker & he’s woke up enraged at the situation he has been duped into….or maybe he is a complete clown who is lashing out at the club situation so that when his inevitable dismissal comes round he has the excuses well lined up for when his next employer is looking over his CV.
Either would be equally satisfying as both pour fuel on the fire that is the current situation over there
I really don’t know if this guy is a good manager or not. I tell you what he is, though. An idiot. If he had done proper due diligence on the Liebrox club, he would have known they are a shower of cowboys.
I don’t dislike the guy in the same way I dislike Beale and Slippy G. Coupla evil bastards, the pair ae thum. But he is in grave danger of putting his career at risk. And although I am not sure what I really think about him (other than he is an idiot), I will laugh heartily when his career is kicked into touch.
Punt! There you go ya fud. That’s what you get for being an idiot.
More lies coming out of the rangers!!!!
And they all believe it (MM PISH)
The great pretender’s
They are much weaker than last year. Lost first team starters in Lundstram and Barisic, good player in Jack who when fit was often a first pick and Roofe who. Again was unfit, injured but did score goals when available
Their accounts in the next couple of years are going to be horrendous.
Well written as always James… I feel this could be the rangers worst campaign in our top league in a long time, so much is stacked against them and of their own doing.
How many more worthless shares is it gonna take to shore up the bill paying side alone.
They know they only have the one star worthy of attention in Butland and if they got a serious offer of £7-8m they would bite the hand off and of course ensure that the price was doubled (in the press) with the travel to the moon additions.
The Saudi jillions aren’t going to come for Tavs or Goldson, they’d be happy just to get them off the wage bill imo saving £3-4m a year for the pair.
The manager seems to have lost the dressing room and we all know how this will play out, the usual ending where the leaks get thru the press and Clemente is then seen as the enemy and the Klan make that known with their hatred and he’ll be a Kaflik interloper.
Costly to pay the big chap off it seems so it might be a long slog to ditch him and team.
Can’t wait to the season start.
The guy is an absolute charlatan. I want him embarrassed and defeated.
Classless and clueless.
If I was a sevco fan I would stop buying that scum RECORD AND THE SUN because they journalists are filling their heads up with shite lie after lie and they are falling for it who the fuck wants to buy a new club like cheating oldco and newco plus a club tthat bought the old club history eh this is the kind of pish the media in Scotland come out with who is reading these lies yes you guess it the huns in blue they are just as bad as there new club sevco Scotland fc 2012..bye bye to the biggest cheats in Scottish football oldco RANJURS and newco sevco Scotland fc..hahahaheheheeeeeeee