Mad Phil sat at his presser yesterday and dismissed the concerns of the Ibrox fans. Bravo sir!

We’ve all seen some pretty extraordinary things in the last 13 years. I wrote about this yesterday, and I think Sunday’s podcast will be devoted, at least in part, to Administration Day and all the issues relating to it.

But in all those years since, I have rarely seen an Ibrox manager so plainly determined to kick his own fans as hard as Philippe Clement did yesterday.

From his answer to the opening question to the way he responded to the final one, it was an absolute, gross insult to all of their supporters and for Celtic fans it was the stuff dreams are made of; a man who is either delusional or arrogant enough with a thick enough skin to gaslight the lot of them until the club writes him a cheque.

Either way, it was beautiful, man. Just beautiful.

He started by talking about how the events of the last six days or so were, as he put it—and I’m using his exact words here, not exaggerating—“nothing special towards other weeks.”

Nothing special?

After what even his own fans are describing as a generationally bad result. A once-in-a-lifetime disaster. That result was that serious.

No Ibrox club has ever lost a Scottish Cup tie at home to a team from a division below them. That is an extraordinary reversal. A profoundly earth-shattering moment. And for him to speak about it as if there was nothing particularly significant must have gone down like a lead balloon among watching fans.

The second question he took was about whether he had spoken with the board. He said that yes, of course, he had, and that he and Stewart had consoled each other with the idea that the result did not reflect the game. Once again, if he thinks he can take solace in that—if he thinks the Ibrox fans will accept that explanation and just hand-wave this disaster the way he has—he’s crazy.

The questions continued, but so did the excuses. He said at one point that there are moments when you’re watching the game when you just want to blast the ball into the net yourself, but that it’s on the players.

Which is a nice way of saying, “Blame them, not me, for this mess.”

He rambled when asked if the talks with Stewart centred only on the one game and not on the wider implications of the defeat. And he pivoted back to the old excuse that everyone was disappointed, that everyone had the same goals, and that the general distress felt among the fans was also felt by those at the club.

But the fans only have to watch this mess unfold. It’s the people at the club who are responsible for trying to fix it, to sort it out, to get back on track—whatever that even means now for this hapless, deluded, insane football club that operates in the most slapdash manner imaginable.

He admitted his heart was heavy at the video of him walking out of Ibrox and getting a particularly severe barracking from one mad fan in particular. He made a point of saying that he stopped to sign autographs for kids—the only people anywhere near the place who still want his autograph. Those who don’t know any better.

Then he talked about the synergy that once existed between him and the fans. He talked about the positive experiences he’s enjoyed with them; I think he must have been thinking of Celtic fans. We’ve taken pleasure in a right few of them. I have trouble remembering the days when the Ibrox fans could say the same. I do, however, remember a lot of booing.

He pivoted back to the “positives”—the win against Dundee United, the victory over Celtic, the result against Spurs. Not a single one of those moments counts for anything now in the eyes of supporters who have split the world into two timeframes: Before Queen’s Park and After Queen’s Park. He thinks all he has to do is win the next couple of games and this will be forgotten.

It was at this point that I actually felt a little bit sorry for the guy.

Because if this isn’t an act—if this isn’t just a guy who wants his payoff and knows that the club will have to be forced to sack him and hand it over—then what we’re seeing instead is a man completely out of his depth. A man who is so massively in over his bald head that he genuinely doesn’t understand how things work in this weird little corner of the football world.

Or that a result like this almost always ends in a sacking within hours of the final whistle. The fact he has survived this long is unprecedented, in the same way that the result itself was unprecedented.

The enormous implications of it have not sunk in.

He hasn’t grasped any of the pertinent facts about that result or what the future holds for him in its aftermath. Whatever goodwill he had is gone. And it’s not coming back. There are results from which a manager does not recover.

Fans will go to every game waiting for him to slip up again. Waiting for the moment they can get back to screaming at him to get out of the club. He has no more goodwill to burn. It’s over.

And really, this man can only be doing one of two things.

Either he’s living in complete denial—stemming from a total failure to understand the situation—or he’s putting it on. He’s insulting the intelligence of the supporters by pretending not to know that, for any other manager, this would be an untenable situation. And if he is putting it on, then fair play to him, because he’s doing a damn good job of it. He almost has me feeling sorry for him.

But then I’m sitting here laughing at the plight this club is facing.

So, I have a slightly different take on it from the Ibrox fans—none of whom will be feeling even a shred of sympathy for him. All of whom were vehemently hoping that someone other than him would be sitting in front of the media yesterday. If you’d told the majority of their supporters at the weekend that he would still be sitting there, taking questions, they might well have stormed Ibrox and burned the place to the ground.

And this was expressed at the end, when someone from the Ibrox fan media said to him that this was the last straw for most of the fans.

A sentiment that is not difficult to understand at all.

His response? “That’s what you say.” To which the fan shot back, “I think most people would agree with me.” Not just most. I’d say almost all.

Yet Philippe had one last act of defiance.

“My focus is on the next game,” he said, dismissing the question, dismissing the point, dismissing all those fans who agree with the sentiment.

And all I can say is that he is very fortunate that the next game is at Tynecastle and not at Ibrox. But he can’t avoid Ibrox forever. Neither can his board of directors, who will find themselves in the firing line if that man is still sitting in the dugout that day.

And that’s before you even consider the wider implications of another defeat at Tynecastle on Sunday, and it is not out of the realms of possibility. If that happens, then this situation is about to spiral even further, and all involved would do well to consider invoking Plan A and finding an “amicable” way to part company.

It will be about as amicable as the other St Valentines Day massacre and perhaps almost as amusing to us as the one we celebrate every year.

Photo by Rob Casey/SNS Group via Getty Images