GlasgowWorld reporters Lewis Anderson and Ben Banks discuss the Belgian's future at Ibrox following Sunday's humiliating Scottish Cup exit to Queen's Park
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00:00Hello and welcome to the latest episode of National World's Fit By Talk where we
00:05go through the weekly Celtic and Rangers headlines. Today is very much a show
00:10centred around Rangers on the back of their humiliating Scottish Cup exit at
00:16the hands of Queen's Park on Sunday at Ibrox. My colleague Ben Banks joined
00:22me this afternoon to go through the potential implications, what this might
00:27mean for Philippe Clement on the back of that result. There's certainly been a lot
00:30of murmurings around his position and whether or not he can continue as
00:35Rangers manager. Ben, what was your take on Sunday's humiliating result?
00:42Couldn't believe it. I think when it was 0-0 at half-time, it was not the same
00:47against Fraser were, but they toiled, eventually got the goal and then they
00:50broke the low, they got position down. Queen's Park are obviously a bit different,
00:53they're a full-time team, not this season, but in the last few seasons there's
00:59been a bit of money put into Queen's Park, you can see that with the sort of new
01:02stadium they've got, they've went professional, they've got an experienced manager in
01:05Callum Davidson now, so it's not like they've got bad players, but you would
01:09expect Rangers to be able to take care of them even with a rotated team. It
01:15wasn't a massively rotated team, it was a rotated team of sorts, but not hugely, but
01:21when it got to half-time, I thought the substitution to take Bailey Rice off, who
01:25you're giving an opportunity to, it just sensed a wee bit of, I think he sensed it
01:29wasn't going the way he wanted it to, usually Clermont cuts a
01:35calm figure, but that was the first time I seemed to maybe, not quite panic, but
01:40kind of go, right, let's just get this done, and if you're thinking like
01:44that, just start your best team from the start, get two goals up and then play
01:48Bailey Rice for a half of that, if you're going to take him off at
01:51half-time anyway, which is then just detrimental, then I think that's what you
01:54do, but I still thought the Rangers would go and even if it was 1 or 2-0, they would get
02:00criticised for a poor performance, but ultimately they'd still be in the cup, but it goes
02:04on, it goes on, and then Queen's Park get the goal, and then all of a sudden, even when
02:08Queen's Park scored, you're thinking, right, okay, it's a setback, there's going to be lots of noise
02:12after this, but they'll eventually get it, and it just never came. A great day
02:16for Queen's Park, obviously, and that shouldn't be forgotten, but obviously
02:20where we are in the world, all the talk is going to be about Rangers, and so it mostly has been, and I think the
02:27fans were already on the fence the last eight weeks, getting to the last 16 and
02:33finishing in the top eight of the league phase in the Europa League in bottles of
02:36time, but that has all been taken away now, you can't be Rangers manager and get
02:41beat off a team like Queen's Park, with no disrespect to them, because it just can't
02:47happen, the budget differential, the player quality differential is huge, so
02:54personally, I don't think he will go, I think he will remain Rangers manager,
02:58strangely, but I think the goodwill of the fans has gone, and I think it
03:04becomes, no matter whether it's next week, next month, next year, it always becomes an
03:09inevitability that the end will soon come for you if the fans aren't on side.
03:13It's hard to see a way back, isn't it? I think given this isn't the first time
03:16as you said this season that the Rangers fans have certainly turned against them,
03:20all faith is no longer there, obviously we had the league video clip a few weeks
03:26ago with Fraser Thornton and Patrick Stewart addressing one of the
03:30hospitality lounges, basically they've publicly backed Clement, throwing their full
03:35support behind them, you'd imagine that their thinking might alter slightly
03:40in the back of a result like that at the weekend, but yeah, it's hard to see them
03:44acting now, you'd imagine, we had the reports come out last night anyway, that it would be
03:49around the £1.2 million mark to sever his contract in part ways,
03:56which given Rangers' financial implications at this moment in time is a
04:01difficult one, you know, we're just a street Rangers, I guess now you're looking
04:07at potentially a trophy this season, obviously they're in the last 16 of the
04:11Europa League, but that's going to be a big ask, isn't it?
04:14Yeah, I would imagine it is a trophy this season, they're not going to catch Celtic,
04:18Celtic are far gone, I mean Celtic have posted it, it's pretty galling for Rangers, less than 48 hours
04:23after they've beat off Queen's Park, Celtic have posted that they've got the £65 million
04:27in the bank, there's such an enormous gap between those clubs on and off the park,
04:33perhaps even bigger than it was when they first came back up to the Premiership,
04:36in terms of, I just don't know how you claw that gap back if you're Rangers,
04:40which is a concern maybe for the longer term, the shorter term, I think all the eggs need to go in the
04:46Europa League basket again, I think everything needs to go on that, ultimately whether you
04:49lose the league by 2 points or 20 points, you're going to lose it all the same, so
04:54you can't have too many disasters by the same token, you can't just lose every week
04:57obviously, but I mean they need to go and make a fist of the Europa League, but the quality in that is high,
05:04then again they have performed well, I think I said last time we were speaking
05:08is that Clermont is a very, and the same with Van Bronckhorst, is that they're good
05:13European style managers, whereas in Europe when they don't have as much in the ball and
05:17it's a bit more regimented and disciplined, that's when their teams come to their best,
05:22those teams are not suited to play domestically against Queen's Park who park 10 men behind
05:26the ball and look to score with their one shot goal, they don't do well against those
05:30teams, got a wee bit better in recent weeks but just again all the old problems show that
05:36they are still very much there, so I think it leaves Rangers in a position where again
05:41probably trophy-less because they're going to run into teams, they're going to turn into
05:44the Queen's Park when they come up against the likes of Tottenham who are still at that
05:48level, and then I mean Clermont's talked about consistency and you can't have progress if
05:55you don't have consistency and I do agree with that, you can't just keep chopping,
05:58changing manager, but the manager needs to be the right manager, you can't just back
06:03somebody because you've sacked other guys, that's not a reason to continue, and it shouldn't
06:08be a reason you want to continue either as manager, so I think they're in a really difficult
06:14position in that I can see the sense in why they would want to try and stick with a guy
06:18but I think there'll be serious questions now as to whether they've got, not so much,
06:21they might believe they've got the right guy but the fan noise for me is always massive
06:25in these situations, fan pressure is such a big thing in football nowadays, more so
06:30than it ever has been I think, and there's only going to be so long that that hold or
06:35they can hold that value, they would need to show a real level of ball to log that out
06:39at this stage.
06:40I think the excuses as well from Clermont in every press conference these days seems
06:45to go back to the point that is that an evolution of the squad, so and so, we've heard it so
06:50many times haven't we, let's say inevitably on the back of this obviously the bookmakers
06:56are after a list of potential candidates who could be replaced, come on, let's say
07:00hypothetically Rangers do decide to make a change, you know, same before the game against
07:06Harsh this weekend, some of the names at the top of the betting could replace him, talk
07:12to Steven Gerrard returning to Ibrox, Kevin Musket's a name that never seems to disappear,
07:18at this moment in time you've got Rob Edwards, Sean Dyche, Wayne Rooney, what would be your
07:25guess, where can you see Rangers, what route do you think they might go down?
07:30None of those names probably, I can imagine that, I mean if you don't like Philippe Clermont's
07:35brand of football, Sean Dyche's brand of football at Rangers is not going to be well received
07:41I can imagine, but I think they need to go for an attack minded manager in that obviously
07:49I'm not saying going higher, Andrew Pauls to Coldblue, but Brendan Rodgers and Andrew
07:53Pauls to Coldblue teams, the reason they work domestically is because they're all out
07:57front foot attacking, they don't sit off, they don't sit off games, it's all 100mph
08:01and it blows teams away, the teams at this level, when you get players, and Rangers have
08:05got players, you know, Vaclav Cerny, albeit on loan, but Ighaman, Vaclav Cerny, Hadji,
08:11Bajrami's skilled to impress, but they've got good technical players there that are
08:15of a level more than everybody they play domestically, apart from Celtic, you would think that you
08:21set up in such a way where you just go and lean on that, go and try and smash your team
08:253 and 4, nothing, they don't do that, they play in a disciplined fashion where they play
08:29slow, tedious passes, take ages to break down a team, but eventually after they've made
08:3430 passes, they're no further forward to the goal, and you're then left trying to rely
08:39on a moment of brilliance from somebody, I think they need to hire somebody who puts
08:43principles on just trying to play forward in domestic games, they need to get the domestic
08:48stuff right, that might come at a cost to Europe because that style of play doesn't
08:52translate necessarily as effectively, especially if you've not got the calibre of a player
08:56potentially, that style doesn't translate as well to Europe and it might come at a cost
09:01to progress in Europe, I think you need to try and get a handle on the domestic stuff
09:06because it's not even just the league, I mean the cup wins have also been few and far between,
09:10they need to try and get back to winning domestically and then focus on Europe, because European
09:15stuff's great obviously, it's a great achievement to be in the last 16, to be one of the top
09:208 teams in that league phase is a real good achievement, but it seems to me it comes at
09:25the cost of all domestic success, which ultimately is what they're going to be judged on, ultimately
09:29if they get put out of the last 16, it's still been a decent enough European campaign for
09:33them considering the opponents they've played, they really need to get a handle on the domestic
09:37stuff, so I'm not sure on a potential candidate at this stage, but I think it needs to be
09:42somebody front-footed, who basically goes to look to blow teams away, rather than somebody
09:47who is a tactician in the style of LeBron and Van Rompuy, I think it needs to be somebody
09:55a bit more forward.
09:56Just finally then, do you think the majority of the Rangers fanbase right now, if you said
10:01to them right now Steven Gerrard would be returning as Rangers manager, the majority
10:05in my opinion would probably bite their hand off, given there's this feeling that Rangers
10:10haven't kicked on since his time in charge?
10:13And you would argue that he hasn't kicked on either, the two of them were sort of stood
10:16still, he went to Aston Villa, didn't work, but who I am, he's then taken that same club
10:21and taken it to heights that they've not seen for, you know, 30, 40 years, and he's went
10:27to Aleti by the sounds of it, being backed with a big budget, but in that I can't say
10:31I'm an avid watcher of Saudi league football, but he's not exactly delivered hugely impressive
10:39wins or anything like that over there, so they're both kind of stood still, there's
10:44sometimes a wee thinking with certain players, certain managers, that they sometimes just,
10:48it's meant to be a club, it might not happen anywhere else, but then they come to this
10:53one club for whatever reason, it just happens, and I think Rangers fans are kind of clinging
10:58on to that at the minute, if I'm being honest the Gerrard stuff I think is just totally
11:03rooted in nostalgia, because it was a time where they won something, there was success
11:08over a season, I think fans are just so desperate for that, it's been a long time since, I mean
11:14that was obviously behind closed doors, so you only get to experience it to such an extent,
11:18it's really been what you're going to be going on by the time you get to 2026, you're approaching
11:2415 years without an actual title with fans in the stadium, so I think that's deep rooted
11:31in nostalgia, and I think fans will take anybody who's had a level of success at Rangers before
11:36at this stage just to try and get something, anything going, but Gerrard's certainly one
11:41you would imagine will hear, and you're already hearing it, you'll hear a lot about Gerrard
11:46and potential links to Rangers once, well I say once, if Clement is sacked or he leaves
11:54his position.
11:55Well that's all we've got time for on today's show, but stay tuned, obviously it'll be an
11:59intriguing couple of weeks I'd imagine around Clement's position, whether or not the Rangers
12:03board decide to act now, or in fact wait for the summer, one thing's probably inevitable
12:08that there will be change in the foreseeable future you'd imagine.
12:12So that's all we've got time for today, stay tuned for the next episode of Fit the Top.