Keith Jackson Turns The Guns On Clement As Blue On Blue Slaughter Threatens To Engulf Ibrox.

There are people who think that the Celtic board is doing nothing because, as often, they are relying on the Ibrox club shooting itself in the foot.

They suspect that our board looks across the city and sees the appalling state that lot are in and recognises that it does not have to do that much to stay ahead. It’s a risky play. We tried it last season and almost paid a high price for it. With the new-look Champions League and the opportunity it affords us, we should not be messing about like this.

But let’s be honest here; the Ibrox club is an absolute shambles and getting worse by the minute. They are now trying to force as many as a half dozen players to quit the club and so far, none of them are budging. Forget crazy talk of £7 million bids for players south of the border; if that club can’t move out some of its current dreck, they won’t be able to spend a tenth of that sum.

Since the weekend, and their loss to Manchester Utd, when the awful implications of the season in front of them were made crystal clear, the anger on the forums has been off the charts and the blame game is in full bloom. It’s getting ugly over there, and a lot of them are turning on each other, some because they think the criticism is too fierce and others because they don’t think it is fierce enough. None of them are happy though, that’s a fact.

All this has now leaped into the mainstream media, where some of the hacks are as panic stricken as any Ibrox fan on a forum, and it should be obvious who is banging the drum loudest; it’s Keith Jackson, doing the bidding of John Bennett once again. That is obvious when you read the piece, which is a toe-curling piece of backside kissing.

I’m obviously going to go over it in full. But what this article shows, I think, is the growing disharmony inside Ibrox’s walls, echoing the sentiments of people like The Village Idiot in the last week and offering confirmation that something is badly wrong in there.

Here’s the headline, and it’s a classic.

“Philippe Clement has Rangers questions to answer as John Bennett needs balls of steel to escape calamity unscathed – Keith Jackson”

The word “calamity” is fitting. No-one is escaping this unscathed.

“Keith isn’t letting Clement off the hook despite Bennett bearing the brunt of Ibrox fiasco”

That’s the sub-heading. It’s Jackson’s way of saying “why is the chairman getting all this stick?” Anyway, onto the main text …

“An utter calamity of a close season might have begun with a missing cargo of steel. But pretty soon (Ibrox) chairman John Bennett is going to have to front up for the rabbit hole that his club is in danger of disappearing down.”

Ugh. Horrible writing as ever. But it wasn’t the “missing” steel which started this unravelling. That began much sooner. It started at Hampden when Adam Idah’s winner secured the cup for Celtic. Because that was not in the Ibrox script at all.

“And he’s going to require balls of titanium if he’s to come through it unscathed. It’s impossible not to feel some sympathy for Bennett who has been left horribly exposed by the amateurism of Michael Beale and James Bisgrove – a manager and a chief executive who weren’t worthy of the roles and responsibilities they were given.”

It’s impossible to feel any sympathy for Bennett, Mr Scores To Settle, with all his bluster. Incredibly, Jackson is continuing to blame other people for problems that start at the very top of the famed Marble Staircase over in Lego-Land.

I remember the praise Beale was getting not that long ago by the same writer until that too started unravelling. To be fair, he’s always hated Bisgrove and has been slagging him for a while … but the question has to be asked; if these two were such incompetents, isn’t it time to look at the men who handed those responsibilities to them in the first place? And who was that? Well, Bennett was certainly in the room if not in the big chair. And as we’ll see, Jackson has arrived at that conclusion … much too late for it to matter.

“Even so, the buck stops with Bennett for appointing them in the first place, and now he’s the man who has to fix the mess they have left behind. It’s also completely understandable if he’s not comfortable being thrust into the spotlight having spent his entire business career operating in the background while overseeing investment portfolios worth billions of pounds.”

Oh, cry me a river. He wasn’t forced to take on that spotlight. He wasn’t pushed into that boardroom at gunpoint, and he’s perfectly happy sitting in front of the in-house club channels and its pliable spoon-fed fan media and acting like The Big I Am when it suits him. So, he has to make difficult decisions now? Tough. That’s the job, and if he wasn’t hiding so much instead of bringing in a new CEO, he might be doing it better.

“But even though the numbers might have been huge, nothing he experienced in the financial game will have prepared him for the high profile nature of the role he took on in April of last year.”

First, there is zero evidence that he was ever in charge of the kind of sums Jackson alleges. This is the guy who did no due diligence whatsoever when Whyte took over at Ibrox and he was told to write that he was a billionaire, which he unquestioningly did.

I didn’t have my own blog then, but I was a regular poster on a number of other sites and forums, most notably CQN, and I did what the mainstream media should have.

I researched Whyte and published what I found; I downloaded the most up to date copy of the Sunday Times Rich List and went through it and confirmed that Whyte wasn’t on it.

The lowest entry on the list that year had a net worth in the tens of millions and the Motherwell Born Billionaire was nowhere to be seen. It’s not like they had never heard of him either; I found his entry on the Scottish Young Rich List from back when he made his first couple of million, so they knew exactly who he was. Not one journalist did what I did as a matter of course, but Jackson ran that lie and then blamed the PR firm who told him to.

So, I don’t know how seriously we should take anything that he writes about how Bennett was some kind of financial guru moving billions with the flick of his pen. For all we know that’s just more PR cobblers which he is happy to regurgitate.

But once again, we’re expected to feel sorry for a guy who took on the role as chairman of his own volition. I have not one iota of sympathy at all.

“There’s a heavy emotional toll to be factored in too. Bennett is a lifelong (Ibrox clubs) supporter, so the thought of being held personally responsible for all manner of catastrophes at the club he loves is bound to sting him in a manner which is hard to imagine.”

Isn’t this horrific? Bleeding heart bollocks for one of the Real Rangers Men. These Peepul never learn a damn thing. But it’s obvious now exactly whose bidding Jackson is doing here.

“When he did reluctantly break cover a couple of weeks ago to confirm that Rangers would have to be rehoused at Hampden Park for an unspecified period of time, Bennett was also attempting to reconnect with a fan base which is currently teetering on the brink of a full-scale revolt.”

Maybe it’s just me who thinks this is part of the job. Bennett didn’t “break cover” either; he did what the gutless wonders on our board do, and issued a statement through the club’s media. Their directors treat their fans with even more contempt than ours treat us.

It has been ages since either club put its top people in front of a proper interrogator. Ours gets away with it because we’re winning. Theirs is under more pressure because they aren’t, but neither board is confident enough in its direction to put someone up front for hard questions.

“But given that the one thing they needed to hear was the one thing he couldn’t tell them, Bennett was always going to be on a hiding to nothing. The word he used was ‘certainty’. Bennett went as far as to say that (they) ‘crave’ it. And yet without having the first idea of when his stadium might actually be reopened, Bennett had no way of providing what he knew was required.”

Only an idiot believes that the Ibrox board does not already have a fair idea how long this is going to take. You think they’re relaying the Hampden pitch and that Queens Park are offering to vacate the place “for as long as it takes” if all involved don’t already know what the minimum timeframe is likely to be here?

Ibrox is taking its fans for mugs.

Thankfully it has this Useful Idiot here to do PR for it.

“There is nothing even remotely certain about (the club) right now. On the contrary, with less than two weeks to go before the season kicks off, the picture is one of chaos. On the pitch as well as off it.”

Well, I can’t argue with that.

“Yes, Bennett has been left holding the baby where the stadium reconstruction work is concerned. Bisgrove made sure of that when he bolted for Riyadh, having given assurances that the Copland Road project would be completed on schedule before he left for the airport.”

More of this Bisgrove rubbish and the continuing theme that poor Bennett has been the victim of other people’s bad decisions, and not just his own. It’s tiresome. Jackson would rather keep flogging this dead horse, than focus on what’s really going on.

Now why do you imagine that is?

“No wonder the board felt bruised and betrayed when they discovered they would be forced to evict their team and its followers from their own home. Bennett took it upon himself to provide a solution and, given the immense scale of the complexities involved, it seems reasonable to assume he’ll have been entirely consumed by it.”

Bruised and betrayed again. Christ. And what is this rubbish which makes Bennett sound like a hero? He’s done the bare minimum expected of him here. The guy had to rent out a stadium and there were two which were available to him and he’s taken the closest one to the ground.

The negotiations were complicated, the solution has probably not been cheap, but it doesn’t even sound like the discussions were that difficult, and why would they be? Ibrox has made a mess and the SFA is stepping up to make sure they don’t suffer too much for it.

“But if he takes a moment to put his foot on the ball, he might also realise that there’s an even bigger stink hurtling his way down the pipeline. Because, as angry as the club’s supporters will be over being made homeless, they will be apoplectic should their team also be found unfit for purpose when the new campaign begins.”

Apart from the dreadful writing there, there’s not much to argue with.

Because now we’re getting to the guts of the piece … the moment Jackson dumps a toxic sludge on the head of Clement.

“And, the closer it comes to the big kick off, the more legitimate their concerns appear to be. For a start, manager Philippe Clement has already clicked into self-preservation mode.”

Which is not inaccurate.

Yet what do you expect? He’s said things that can only lead you to conclude that he feels like he was misled at the very least when he was talking to the club about taking on the job in October of last year. It also can’t be a great shock that Clement is arrogant, vaguely delusional and takes no personal responsibility when things go wrong at all.

“By insisting that he’s been blindsided by the lack of funds available to him this summer, the Belgian hasn’t just kicked a can down the road – he’s volleyed it straight into the boardroom and ramped up the heat on those inside.”

Where else should he have put it? Instead of asking what he’s doing playing kick-the-can why not ask whether or not what Clement is saying is basically true? If he’s been lied to here then how else should he act? Doesn’t that suggest even bigger problems at the club?

“That might protect his own reputation and safeguard his relationship with the fans. But it smacks of a wider sense of dysfunctionality and makes Clement look like a man getting his excuses in early.”

This is so brilliant, isn’t it? Jackson attacking the manager. Now, imagine you were a real journalist, as opposed to this PR stooge for the club. What might you conclude from a piece which praises Bennett as a genius, throws some bombs at Bisgrove and The Mooch and then turns the guns on Clement himself?

I’ll tell you what I might conclude; this is a punishment beating, willed by the board and directed at its own manager because he has talked out of school. Celtic did it after Rodgers talked out of class the season he left, during a summer window every bit as bad as this one. I’m convinced that it was Lawwell himself who briefed against Rodgers to Chris McLaughlin at the BBC. The thing is, this causes major problems inside the walls, as it did at our own club.

“And yet, almost ten full months into the job, it is still unclear as to what exactly Clement is doing to arrest the decline of his side. There’s certainly no sign of an identity or even a suggestion of his preferred style of play.”

Hahaha! Oh man, this is not going to be a gentle slapping, is it? This is the full-scale hang him up by his feet and beat him mercilessly with a rubber hose treatment. Suddenly the tactical genius who would see Rodgers off has feet of clay. Who’d have thought that?

And the beating is about to get even more severe, with a comparison that will be as painful for Clement to read as anything written on one of our sites.

“Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers summed it up as basic ‘long ball’ stuff last season while coming within a few injury time seconds of making it four wins from four against his latest rival from across the city.”

Oh, what joy to read that on something other than these pages. I have written this many, many times and although I don’t remember the Rodgers quote (chances are I was drunk when he said those words, still celebrating us getting that draw, which I knew would be critical) its one I more than agree with. There has been no real change in the way the Ibrox club plays football … and that’s just one of the many reasons that Rodgers will own this guy.

“If nothing much has changed tactically or stylistically between then and now, then questions should be asked of Clement’s own vision for this team. Although, with rumours circulating that his name is in the frame to become the next Belgium national boss, perhaps he might not stick around long enough to answer any of them.”

If you were waiting for the Keith Jackson “whiplash” moment, here it is. The guy who Rodgers has virtually destroyed, the guy “getting the excuses in early”, the manager who provoked this whole piece with a bit of covering his own backside, is so highly rated elsewhere that he might soon hoist Tedesco out of his job and take it himself. What a joke. Still, Jackson can sit down with Bennett and pen another “betrayal” piece if it happens.

“He could also be invited to explain exactly what the problem is between himself and the most talented attacking player in his dressing room as, from the outside looking in, it appears very much like Todd Cantwell’s days will be numbered for as long as Clement remains in position.”

Is this part of the boardroom slap-down or is this just Jackson indulging his own fan-boy leanings?

I find it amazing that anyone who has watched Cantwell can defend what they see.

“Why hasn’t Clement managed to get the best out of the Englishman and why does it feel as if the pair have been constantly at loggerheads since the start? While we’re at it, why is a creator of Cantwell’s quality being pushed to one side when Scott Wright and Rabbi Matondo are the ones left to pick up the slack?”

There is a moment in one of the mid-seasons of The Sopranos where a stripper in the Bada Bing is talking to Tony about one of his men who has gotten her pregnant. “He acts like he doesn’t care,” she wails. “Ever think he’s not acting?” Tony asks her.

Do you think it will ever dawn on this guy that maybe what he’s seeing is the best Cantwell has? That this is it? That the manager has gotten out of him all that there is to get, that maybe this isn’t some failure on Clement’s part but that Cantwell’s Just Not That Good?

Because it seems obvious to me, I’m sure to you the readers, and to everyone else who looks at this without stars in his eyes that he’s inconsistent, moody, greedy, lazy and deluded about how good he thinks he is. Cantwell is not just a luxury player; he is a waste of space and he wouldn’t get into a Brendan Rodgers team in a hundred years.

“Also, now that Clement is just 12 days away from curtain up in Edinburgh, is the manager really still convinced that he shouldn’t have thrown the kitchen sink at signing Lawrence Shankland from Hearts during the January transfer window?”

Everything that can be dredged up and used against Clement is being used in this piece.

This is their way of blaming him for not delivering last year’s title which makes this as efficient a pounding down as I’ve seen delivered since Damien McBride was downing cabinet ministers who strayed off message during Gordon Brown’s premiership.

It was not for nothing they called him McPoison. I’ve been a fan of his work, in all its forms, for many years.

“Did he realise at that point that (the club) couldn’t come up with the cash to strike a deal – or, in fact, did he have misgivings over Shankland’s energy levels and ability to trigger a high-tempo press from the front? Because if Clement truly believed that his team was better equipped to win the title with Cyriel Dessers leading the line, then his judgement is fatally flawed.”

You notice the deft way that he’s suggested that the money for Shankland was there and that Clement just decided not to spend it? Wow.

“Of course, it’s never too late for a change of heart and there’s even time for Clement to reconsider his position on Shankland before the season begins. But first, of course, he’ll have to sell before he can buy.”

Followed by the admission that in fact this summer there is none. Again, this is a clear signal; Clement is being punished for talking out of school. That cannot be permitted. Ibrox must never disclose weakness of any kind, even when everyone knows it is.

“And amidst all of this foggy confusion, chairman Bennett will have to deliver on his promise to bring the fans up to speed on the big stadium delay before the month is out. If they don’t like what they hear over the next fortnight, then titanium grade balls might not be enough to cut it.”

My guess is that it’ll be more lies. After all, why would they bother telling the truth when people like Jackson will be happy to do spin control on their behalf instead? Pathetic. But what it brings home very clearly is that the club over there is hopelessly split, and that the various factions are turning on each other with a vengeance.

This could end in a bloodbath.

But not in tears, not unless they are tears of laughter on this end.

No club deserves more to be swallowed up by this sort of black hole.