Yesterday, TikTok-Todd exploded a bomb right at the heart of the Ibrox dressing room.

I’m not going to get terribly excited about Todd Cantwell’s bizarre press statements yesterday, where he referred to us as “the others.” I couldn’t care less about his childish, moronic inability to say the word “Celtic.” I will never refer to the club playing out of Ibrox as “Rangers,” no matter how many people tell me that’s childish and moronic. I’ve got a dedication to the truth and to fact, and I will not lie. Cantwell’s little act of childish spite towards Celtic is nothing.

What is of far more interest to me — and what should be far more interesting to others, including the media and especially the fans over there — is the obvious and clear contempt Cantwell showed for the current manager at Ibrox and for the way he’s going about his business. It is silly to focus on an act of immaturity directed at us when so much of what Cantwell said at that sit-down was directed at them. That’s where my interest in his interview lies.

Yesterday, I wrote about the situation facing Clement and how Cerny publicly undermined him when he described the game against Celtic in a completely different way than the manager had done at the weekend. After the Ibrox boss had gone out of his way to play down the significance and scale of Celtic’s victory, Cerny went in front of the media back home and said that they had basically been outplayed.

As I said in my piece, there are only two ways that can be interpreted: Either he and the manager fundamentally disagree on that, or there has been a complete breakdown in message discipline at the club — which means that the manager is not in control of the dressing room anyway.

My strong suspicion is that Cerny and others disagreed with what the manager said because players do have a sense of professional pride. They understand when they’ve been well beaten, and they don’t like it if the manager is okay with that. They don’t like it if he’s making excuses and playing down a heavy defeat as if it’s nothing. Because if he’s talking that way in the dressing room, what confidence can they have in him?

Remember a few weeks ago when I was talking about the fly-on-the-wall documentary that CelticTV was planning about last season? I said that watching Sunderland ‘Til I Die made me leery of the idea of any such production involving Celtic.

There was one particular moment in that show that I thought was incredibly revealing, and it actually involved a former Celtic player — Aiden McGeady.

During the relevant moment in that documentary, Chris Coleman, the former Welsh national coach, was still relatively well thought of on Teesside and stood a chance of turning Sunderland’s season around. But there was a moment where McGeady, speaking to the camera, expressed his own frustration about Coleman’s managerial style.

After a defeat at the weekend, the players had come in on Monday morning, laughing and joking, while Coleman was telling them they’d played well. McGeady, who had played under some excellent managers at Celtic, was aghast at the attitude, the laxity, and what he saw as fundamental unprofessionalism. It showed complete disrespect for the fans and a glaring lack of awareness of the potential consequences if the club didn’t get its act together.

I think about that in the context of what must be going on in the Ibrox dressing room right now, when players hear their manager talking that kind of nonsense to the media.

Do you think they’re sitting there thinking, “The boss is right”? Or are they thinking, “He’s talking delusional garbage. How is this guy ever going to turn this around? He doesn’t even appreciate the seriousness of the situation we’re in”?

It seems clear from Cantwell’s comments that he wasn’t impressed at all by Clement’s tactics or his vision for the club. You can put this down to a temper tantrum from this preposterous manchild if you want, and I won’t entirely disagree. But let’s be honest: there are parts of that critique which are wholly recognizable. There are parts that make certain things make more sense.

Let’s get the obvious point out of the way first: Cantwell flatly denies that he ever had a conversation where he told Philippe Clement that he wanted to leave the club. You can choose to believe that or not, but I personally have more than an inkling that it’s true and that Cantwell has been misrepresented here, or to put it another way, that Clement lied about that.

I’ve said for a while that it’s obvious that Clement is arrogant, that he doesn’t like to be questioned, and that he doesn’t like to be critiqued — especially by one of his own players. It seems clear from Cantwell’s statement that he and the manager fundamentally disagreed about the tactical shape of the team and what Cantwell’s role should be within it.

To me, it’s equally plain that Clement is exactly the kind of person who wouldn’t accept a player trying to tell him where his best position is or how best to set up the team.

It’s obvious that there was a personal fall out between the two of them. It’s not a stretch to say that Clement behaves in a way that reveals a guy who would be prepared to be petty and vindictive to that extent. This, after all, is a fellow who boasted to a national newspaper about how he left his wife because she didn’t share his winning mentality.

To me, this is a hit job on the manager, and the reason it may be effective is that it rings so true with what we already suspect about Clement and with what’s already in the public domain. Cantwell is not the only player to leave recently and talk about how the culture of the club is not the same as the one he joined. He’s not the only person who’s left after an obvious spat with the manager.

There are rumours about Connor Goldson, and in fact, this blog predicted last season when Goldson got injured that he did not have a future at Ibrox because of those widespread rumours at the time. Then there’s the Tavernier situation, where the guy had to read in the newspaper that his armband was to be given to the goalkeeper. The club desperately tried to spin that by saying it would only happen if Tavernier was sold, but the fact that they were openly discussing the sale of the captain and anointing his successor — and that this ends up in the public domain — is disastrous for dressing room morale. You only have to look at the way Tavernier is playing right now to realize that this is not the same relationship it once was.

Jack Butland also can’t feel too good since he was told he’d get the armband and now hasn’t got it. He had to go around the manager to talk to the chairman to find out what his future at the club was. And this is to say nothing of Hagi, rotting in the reserves even now, having been told that no matter what decision he makes about his contract, he won’t be back in the first team.

This is a potential million-pound asset being paid a high salary, whom the manager refuses to even consider for selection, at a club where he moans about the poor options he has and where they are pleading poverty. It’s untenable.

This would be different if it was someone who had left, say, Aberdeen or Hearts or even Celtic and then trashed the manager with stuff that was obviously untrue or that didn’t match facts we already know are in the public domain. If there wasn’t already a perception problem, you wouldn’t believe this for a second. You’d dismiss it out of hand, but it’s impossible to dismiss because it is so perfectly in line with what many already believe.

Clement does come across as a petty and vindictive man. His tactics are difficult to comprehend, even for people who watch the game professionally and know something about it. The average fan on the blogs and in the forums is asking the same questions Cantwell evidently asked: “Why don’t you just play me where I’ve played for the bulk of my career?”

Ibrox fans have been driven almost mad by the question of why he dIdn’t play Cantwell in his natural position. Similar questions have been asked about other players in the team. Where, in God’s name, does Dujon Sterling play? No one seems to know because the manager has played him at left-back, right-back, central defence, and central midfield.

Does the manager even know what his best position is? Because no one else does, with all this shuffling about, chopping, and changing.

I understood the semi-logic of deploying Diomande in an advanced forward position against us because he was there to mark Callum McGregor, but I also pointed out in the piece I wrote about it that Clement obviously hadn’t watched McGregor this season.

He had no idea that McGregor was going to drift around the pitch so much, making his zonal marking plan for him virtually useless, or that McGregor and Bernardo would swap positions several times during the game, allowing McGregor to push forward, negating it even more. I mean, Clement’s decision-making is questionable at best, and his inability to adapt to changes in the game is obvious when you watch how they play.

It’s blatant when you look back at some of the games last season. There were occasions where opposition managers made tactical substitutions with intent, going for the throat against his club, and Clement did not react properly to those substitutions. In fact, on some occasions, he made moves that played right into the opposition’s hands.

This is not an elite-level manager, and that is why Cantwell’s statements have more than a ring of truth to them and could do serious damage to this guy.

Not just because the perception already exists among many of their supporters and almost everyone on this side of the city, and I am certain a lot of folk in the media too, and it’s notable that many are now beginning to subject this guy to proper scrutiny.

But he also has problems now within the Ibrox dressing room, where there will have been more than the occasional nod of recognition from other players who know exactly what Cantwell is talking about and can see it for themselves.

This is nothing to the doubts that surely have to exist in the Ibrox boardroom.

Clement needed this like a hole in the head. It is a disastrous development for him and for his club and it’s followed on by worse news, which I’m going to write about later on today and which again reveals the manager in the worst possible light.

I said the other day that he is in a tight race with Steven Naismith to see who gets sacked first. You know what? I’m going to revise my prediction somewhat. I thought Clement had the edge, but only just, in that race, but I’ll tell you what, after the Cantwell interview and some of the other news that dropped yesterday on this guy’s head. I think he is in real bother.

I think he is way in front of Naismith when it comes to the danger zone Because when something is this badly broken it has to be obvious to everyone inside Ibrox. This is not working and will not work. And the only question then becomes how long you persist before you bow to the inevitable. If it’s coming – and it’s definitely coming – then better to do it quick and get it over with.

I think this guy’s only a couple of bad results away from the axe.