Clement falls, and the Celtic boss secures an impossibly large trophy.

Last night, we recorded our latest podcast, and we opened with the news that the Ibrox boss, Philippe Clement, was about to breathe his last breath as the manager over there. It was inevitable.

We could all see it coming a mile off a couple of weeks back when they lost against Queen’s Park. And when they lost at the weekend, there was virtually no chance—none—that he was going to be able to limp on a moment longer.

And so it turns out that Rodgers gets to put another trophy on the wall after all. And for a guy like him, there has to be a certain satisfaction that goes beyond what you get for winning silverware.

These are the real prizes for a man like Rodgers. He’s like a big-game hunter who knows he can take down a stag at any time, but the chance to hunt a tiger in its own jungle? Just for the pleasure of putting away a real predator.

In what’s supposed to be the toughest derby in the world, he just keeps on winning. He just keeps on seeing off the competition, and he just keeps on mounting their heads. Because that’s the measure of a genuine conqueror.

When the Romans lost the battle at Teutoburg Forest, not only did Publius Quinctilius Varus die in the battle and see three legions annihilated, but the Germanic tribesmen took their personal standards. When Augustus heard about this, he disbanded the three legions and never reconstituted them. That was virtually unheard of in the Roman army. Losing the personal standard of one legion was bad enough. Losing three was a humiliation that Rome would try to avenge forever more.

Rodgers has just put away more than three legions here.

He has swatted aside everything that Ibrox could throw at him. And I know Gerrard is the prince over the water that they hope will come back. But every Celtic fan longs for that, because Rodgers had the beating of him the first time, and there’s no doubt he’d have the beating of him the second time.

The only question is how much humiliation people are willing to suffer in order to take that job. Because as long as Rodgers is here, he’s just going to keep on mounting their heads on spikes.

In Rome, it was customary that if you won a major battle against an enemy state, you got a triumph. Rodgers is fully entitled to feel he deserves his.

He hasn’t just defeated this enemy—he’s brought its empire to its knees. And I want you to think about that over the next couple of days. I want you to think about what that means, because that’s on a whole other order of magnitude.

Celtic managers have seen off rival bosses throughout our history. O’Neill himself saw off managers. But Brendan Rodgers has taken down an entire Ibrox board—an entire Ibrox regime. What was will never be again.

He’s brought their club to the brink of utter ruination.

And he didn’t do it single-handedly—Ange was here for two years and delivered a couple of blows—but it’s Rodgers who is here for the final strike. There was a time when this board thought it had the measure of our club.

Between them, he and Ange have sent the ramparts tumbling and burst the gate to the city and it’s Rodgers whose shadow looms largest over all of it and it’s Rodgers who rode in at the head of the army which completed the conquest.

So, yes, there are Celtic managers who can claim Ibrox managerial scalps. But this guy has brought the whole institution crashing down. They know that as long as he’s here, the present directors stand no chance whatsoever. And so even they have to go in service of the Gods of War.

No Celtic manager that I can remember has ever almost single-handedly been responsible for mounting a series of Ibrox directors’ heads in a row on the castle walls. That has to be unique to this guy. And yet, that’s where we are.

That has to hurt them over there. That really has to hurt.

So for Rodgers, this isn’t even the equivalent of the big-game hunter putting a tiger’s head on the wall. This is like bringing home a Tyrannosaurus rex and sticking it in the corner—if you’ve got a room big enough for it.

And you know, if Rodgers does extend his stay here, this may not even be the last Ibrox board he topples. It certainly won’t be the last Ibrox manager he gets rid of. The talk today is that Barry Ferguson will take over on a short-term deal.

I hope he at least has the sense to do what Lennon did when he was offered the Celtic job on a short-term basis—insist that if things go well, he gets the job long-term. Well, by comparison to Clement, means he’d have a chance at it. And Rodgers will have his head mounted within eight months.

To be honest, I don’t know what the answer is for them. I don’t know whether the takeover will happen. I said last night on the podcast that it doesn’t really matter because I don’t see that anything these people do is going to make much of a difference. They certainly haven’t made much of a difference at Leeds, where we outspent them in terms of transfer fees last season.

And they have even less latitude to work with at Ibrox, because they want to bring the debt under control, and they’re going to have to comply with Financial Fair Play.

So the reality is, one of their first acts will have to be appointing someone new, and they’re going to know before that guy is even in the door that he’s already living on borrowed time. Because the idea that the supporters of that club, or the media that follows them, are going to allow anyone an appropriate amount of time to build some kind of long-term foundation is fanciful.

That was the plan with Clement, and it’s taken just two bad results in short order for them to terminate that experiment with extreme prejudice.

Nobody over there is getting the benefit of a long-term plan.

If success isn’t instant, they’ll want heads to roll—and Rodgers will be there with the sword to lop another one off. Even if he goes at the end of next season, my money would still be on him taking at least one more managerial scalp before he does.

Because the cold reality is, the average lifespan of an Ibrox boss has been dropping. This guy got 16 months. That’s not bad compared to some of his predecessors. But let’s be blunt—he should never have got this long. If the money had been there to do the job sooner, it would have been done a lot sooner.

Life expectancy for an Ibrox boss is around 12 months, and that’s for the ones who get a run of luck and good games.

Whoever is next in that chair will have to hit the ground running like never before. Three European qualifiers to negotiate, and if they lose any of the first two, there’s no parachute into another competition. If they lose any of those first two qualifiers, they are done. No European football. And whoever owns that club next is going to have to write one big cheque just to keep the lights on.

They’ll be expected to start fast and hard in the league, expected not to fall behind Celtic too early. Any manager who does will already have a noose around his neck. If that’s accompanied by an early exit from Europe, that noose is going to feel very tight, and they’re going to feel the trapdoor beneath their feet.

And there’ll be plenty of people eager to pull the lever.

Rodgers will be focused on our business.

He’ll be focused on getting us back on a winning run. We lost at the weekend too, and a lot of people in that squad have some making up to do for these fans. But I have no doubt we will get right back on the bus.

That defeat can be taken in isolation because it is an isolated incident. We’ve seen that this team is capable of excellence. There are few doubts about that. We’ve seen that this manager is capable of excellence, and there are even fewer doubts about that.

So he’ll have them out there doing the hard graft, sweating, running, and studying what went wrong at Easter Road. And I expect a very different Celtic team to take the field in the next two games.

But in his downtime, he is entitled to a long, contemplative silence, with his cigar and his brandy, as he sits and admires the trophies on his wall and to know that he didn’t just bring down those managers—he brought down that club in its present form.

That’s next-level stuff. He should be really proud of that.

That’s one hell of a trophy.

Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images

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