Jackson is right. Clement is a Dead Man Walking and Celtic will flip the switch.

This morning, Keith Jackson published his latest piece, and I’m not going to waste much time dissecting it, except to acknowledge that, on one thing, he is absolutely correct. It doesn’t matter what others in his big building think about the possibility of the Ibrox club winning the League Cup, the Europa League, or even mounting a title challenge.

All of it, of course, depends on Celtic collapsing just as quickly as the Ibrox club get their act together. The simple truth is that we all know Clement is living on borrowed time.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll do a piece on Clement. But for now, let’s just say Jackson at least sees the writing on the wall. Every manager has a moment when their position becomes untenable. I think Clement has already passed the point of no return.

Most Ibrox fans likely feel the same way. The axe has yet to fall, but only because the club is so paralysed structurally that it’s keeping him in place for now.

Clement is a dead man walking, and anyone looking at this rationally can see it. Yesterday, they scraped a win against St Johnstone thanks to a single own goal.

For all that the St Johnstone keeper made a few saves, the fact remains that, without that own goal, they would have dropped more points.

This is not an impressive team. Their style is uninspiring. Jackson highlighted some obvious points today in his article, which I’ll explore further tomorrow when I examine Clement in depth. But he’s not said anything we haven’t already discussed here.

One of the subjects we’ve talked about many times on this blog is how a manager eventually reaches a point where there’s no hope of turning things around. They run out of options and are left clinging on week by week, game by game, hoping to scrape together a run of results. All the while, they live in fear of the kind of defeat that will end it all.

For fans, this shifts the experience of watching their team. Instead of looking forward to good football, as Celtic supporters do now, you find yourself attending games wondering if this is the one that brings the curtain down.

For Ibrox fans, and for their hapless boss, that moment isn’t far away. Unfortunately for them, it’s a cup final—and against us.

That match has the potential to put to rest the Survival Lie by rendering their most treasured claim—the trophy count—irrelevant. In a fortnight, even accounting for The Lie, we could pull ahead of them, and their greatest crutch will crumble.

It’s a scenario they fear, but perhaps not as much as they fear the current situation dragging on endlessly. This is the game that will finish Clement.

It’s one he cannot survive if Celtic turn up and do the business. The result could be catastrophic for them, and the record will show a manager with no clue how to get a result against us when it matters. Few managers at Ibrox survive a record that bad.

As we’ve said here before, the timing of their chief executive appointment is no coincidence. That move was designed to provide a quick response to losing that game. The club aims to shift the narrative, regain some support, and salvage what’s left of the season. Whatever short-term damage this causes, financially or otherwise, they likely see it as a price worth paying to refocus the media spotlight away from Celtic’s success.

But that plan begins and ends with sacking Clement. It could happen as early as the CEO’s first day. All the positive talk about manager-CEO alignment won’t matter, because we know it’s meaningless. Jackson is right: a sacking here is inevitable.

There are managerial tenures that simply won’t work, and everyone can see it. Persisting with Clement is wasting time—and, if they back his “vision” in January, wasting resources too. In their financial position, getting the next transfer windows right is critical. Once you admit Clement can’t deliver that, removing him becomes imperative, no matter the cost.

So, yes, Clement is a dead man walking.

Whether or not the media says it outright, everyone knows it’s true. And they know something else: it will be Celtic who strap him into the electric chair and flip the switch.

They say for prisoners on death row, the worst part isn’t the execution itself—it’s the waiting. It’s knowing that a date is circled on the calendar just for you, and every day brings you closer to it. For Clement, that date is nearly here. If I were him, I’d start getting my affairs in order now.

There will be no stay of execution.