EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND - JULY 20: Rangers Manager Philippe Clement during a pre-season friendly match between Manchester United and Rangers at Scottish Gas Murrayfield, on July 20, 2024, in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo by Alan Harvey/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Yesterday, the Scottish sports media failed in its most fundamental and basic task; they failed to do the job of holding someone to their own words. Let me put this a different way; they had a very easy job to do and in an effort to spare an Ibrox manager embarrassment they brought shame and embarrassment upon themselves instead. It is absurd that they allowed this, but they did and the watching world knows it.
Phillipe Clement’s public comments on Ianis Hagi have been known to all of us and for quite some time; he doesnt believe that the player has a future at the club. Not a secret. Not something he was keeping to himself. He has said this, repeatedly, at multiple times and at muliple media conferences. But yesterday, he was allowed to sit in front of the press and describe the player like “a new signing” when everyone in the room knew that was a manifestly absurd claim.
Clement has been the manager there for a year now. Hagi has been a member of his first team squad for each and every minute of that time. Each and every minute of it. He has been dismissed to the reserves, and there he has been rotting, and the manager has made it abundantly clear that he was staying there, and the last time he did so is not some distant memory but something he did just weeks ago.
This was not a story where there was the least doubt about what took place. His hand has been forced. It is crystal clear. I can write that without equivocation and without the least concern that I might be wrong. I’m not wrong. Nobody in that room yesterday would have been in any doubt any more than I am.
No manager, at any other club, would get away with this. It would have been the only topic for discussion at the media event.
And the idea that a Celtic manager who had been walked all over by his own players and by the board would have been permitted to blatantly rewrite history and lie to their faces … that’s too ridiculous even to contemplate.
One newspaper said he had “set the record straight.” Another that he had “told the true story.” Aren’t those admissions that he has been lying this whole time? Whose record were they correcting? His. Whose story were they setting right? His own. He is the one who told the hacks that there was no dilemma and that he had told Hagi that he had no plans to select him. Hagi’s agent and his father have both accused the Ibrox boss of freezing him out. It is rubbish to suggest that things went down in some other way. It makes mugs out of everyone who sat in that media room.
Clement has no credibility inside his own club. That ludicrous spectacle of him on his feet gesticulating like a guy trying to keep a lion away from his kids should have ended his credibility with the media. They are determined to keep him afloat.
But I guarantee that the hard questions will not be kept from Rodgers when he appears in front of the hacks tomorrow. He will get the interrogation. They will not let up on him, and to be blunt he should get questions and there should be an interrogation … but they are such hypocrites that it would make you sick.
You’ll find more backbone in a jellyfish than you ever will in our tragic lickspittle cowardly SMSM. God speed their terminal decline.
Hopefully Lyon gub sevco and all the media bigots will turn on flip flops pissour is dead zombie walking
Is anyone surprised about this…
Violence and / or the threat of it clearly pays in NOT So Bonnie Scotland you know…
That’ll be the way going forward for those who financially support The Press in Scotland…
I’m EXTREMELY PROUD of myself every time that I refer to these bastards as…
THE SCUMMY’S OF THE SCUMMY SCOTTISH FOOTBALL MEDIA !!!!!
It’s another cringeworthy example of the pro ibrox sycophancy with this media. They see theirselves as ibrox sentinels and they’re willing tae sacrifice any shred of professionalism, or credibility they might have (which is very little) tae protect them. It is sickenin hypocrisy your right. Tho it’s nothin that’s gonnae change.
They are ‘Huns’.
Brought up in Scotland to be Unionist Huns.
Brought up to be Defenders of the Monarchy & Faith.
The ‘Faith’ in Scotland equates to Rangers.
Rangers the ‘Staunch’ defenders of Monarchy and Unionism.
Rangers and its bastard progeny to be defended at all costs.
Even to the subjugation of pride in oneself, one’s profession and even your ‘fellow man’.
They have no shame.
I Dont know if you are trying to take our minds off Of Tuesday James but for me it is not working. I have ZERO Interest in Hagi and co. It is only 48 hours after an embarrassing result in Europe James. I am still on a big downer. People like yourself spending their hard earned money to watch that must be feeling it more.. I see Europe as a huge deal, watching my beloved team being humiliated is going to take a while to get over. We have much bigger issues to concern ourselves with.
Jimmy R – I could not agree more. I hold Celtic, my team, to a European standard. Whilst no fan of our board, as I have posted previously, I would expect our CEO to have words with Rodgers and make clear that these European embarrassments have consequences. His denials today in the press conference were worrying – yes he gave himself some wriggle room on tactics, let’s hope he uses it.
Spot on Joe.
I believe Clement in this instance was just toeing the party line and that he had previously been told by the board that Hagi wasn’t available for selection. It is now that same board, minus Bennett, who have backtracked on the Hagi situation and made their manager look ridiculous. Yes, the press should have been more forceful with their probing, what probing?, but they have let him off the hook because that is what they do when it comes to that lot, sweep, sweep.
Let’s see what the press reaction is to their performance last night. On a separate note, TNS of the WELSH League showed what’s possible away to Fiorentina with a realistic game plan in the Conference League last night. I hope BR and the coaching staff were taking notes.
I’m just not seeing this the way you’re seeing it. To me Clement had no choice as from what I’ve read the clause in his contract meant that if he played one more game, therangers would need to stump up another 5 or 6 grand a week. So surely that’s the board preventing him from being picked, not the manager. The manager couldn’t care less about saving the club money, that’s the board. From what I’ve read, Hagi has agreed to change his contract and they no longer need to pay the extra money in his salary so he is now available again to be chosen. The manager didn’t freeze him out, the board did. Why would a manager intentionally hinder himself by not utilising a player at his disposal unless under instruction to do so. I agree with most of your opinions James, but I have to disagree on this one.
Interesting analogy indeed DixieD…
You’ve got me wondering now !