Clement challenge laid bare by Ibrox chaos and £17.8m news coming out of Celtic: view
09/17/2024 02:00 PM
Rangers manager Philippe Clement has a big Celtic shaped problem sitting on his desk at Ibrox.
And the ex-Club Brugge, AS Monaco and Genk manager knows it.
Born winner Philippe Clement would never shirk a challenge and, despite having the opportunity to leave Ibrox, has dug his heels in at Rangers in the aim of eventually overcoming our Old Firm rivals.
There's a first time for everything, after all.
But whilst Clement probably wouldn't have had to beat Celtic to win the Scottish Premiership title last season, this campaign will most certainly be different.
With the Rangers manager adamant the challenge this time round is even bigger than in the last campaign, where he took over the Gers seven points behind, the latest news coming out of Celtic Park shows precisely why.
Rangers gap highlighted by latest Celtic financials
It's often said that only one club in Glasgow can be doing well at any given time.
The dynamic of the Old Firm duopoly at the top of Scottish football is so that narratives shift regularly with one side always in the ascendency and the other, routinely falling apart.
The reality however is that Rangers have once again succumbed to Celtic's dominance with chatter about crisis at Ibrox certainly not far from the truth.
Off the park, Rangers are without a chairman or a CEO, with Dave King back in the picture claiming there's a 'significant' gap between either side of the Old Firm.
On it, Rangers have seen the exits of 16 players from last season's squad, with the eleven who were signed to replace them a mixture of young talents and relative unknowns.
Things are moving forward on the pitch but Philippe Clement routinely talks about the project in terms of years, not months.
Following the release of Celtic's latest accounts, it gives an inclination as to why.
As chaos and uncertainty envelops the leadership of Rangers, our Old Firm rivals remain the picture of stability, banking a pre-tax profit of £17.8m and finishing the year with £77.2m in the bank (BBC Sport).
Peter Lawwell also reckons the Parkhead side boast the most valuable squad in their history, nodding to our Old Firm rivals' much more serious, and much more successful, player trading model.
Philippe Clement faces huge Old Firm challenge
The reality for Rangers fans is that the club is coming through, and in many respects is still in, a tumultuous period which is the culmination of years of leadership problems.
Ever since Rangers lifted the title in 2021 the club has stood still, apprehension over investment being supplemented by Ross Wilson's penchant for 'big names' and even bigger contracts.
Injuries, and an under-equipped medical department at Auchenhowie, have also not helped.
Dave King reckons the finances raised through player sales and the club's European exploits have been 'wasted'.
It's hard to argue with him.
That so many of Rangers' first-team has just walked out the front door without barely raising enough to pay for the botched Copland Stand reconstruction is an insult to match-going and committed supporters.
Despite years of buying up merchandise, record-breaking season ticket sales, and fans following the club through thick and thin, the custodians of the post-Dave King era have careered Rangers off into a ditch.
Philippe Clement might believe in his squad of talented youngsters, with supporters beginning to follow suit, but the Belgian is currently hauling the first-team squad out of said trench with a battered old Vauxhall Corsa as Celtic zoom by in a Mercedes.
A Mercedes perhaps purchased with the prize money on offer for reaching the Champions League.
Celtic let slip their grip on Scottish football once, you can be rest assured that with such resources behind them they will do everything in their power not to do it again.
The Belgian has been mentally preparing supporters for a long-haul project in its infancy with every indication that even he believes the club will struggle to halt the more stable operations across the city in the short term.
With Rangers' corporate management structure also in tatters, the scale of the club's issues and of the challenge in Glasgow has been laid increasingly bare this week.
