Rangers man chose Ibrox move over Saudi Arabia offer, he 'could've made five times the money'

09/07/2024 06:00 AM

Philippe Clement earned a a place in the Rangers’ history books last week.

But not in the way he would have liked. Sunday’s 3-0 defeat to Celtic at Parkhead means the former Moanco boss has now failed to win in any of his five Old Firm derbies in the Rangers dugout. A record only matched by Graeme Murty and William Wilton.

Now, given that Wilton was born seven years before the Glasgow giants were even founded in the 1800s, it’s fair to say that history will not be too kind to Philippe Clement at least as far as his rather miserable head-to-head record with Celtic is concerned.

Johan van Rumst, who won the Belgian league title alongside Clement at Genk and Club Brugge, is backing a man he labels a ‘football addict’ to turn things around.

There can certainly be no doubts about the straight-talking 50-year-old’s fierce desire to drag Rangers back to the summit of Scottish football, with Clement turning down the sort of Middle Eastern offers that would have left him drowning in cash.

Philippe Clement backed to succeed at Rangers

"Of course, a result like that hurts. It hurts, because I know he is working day and night on getting this team back on track,” Van Rumst tells the Daily Record. “Philippe isn't just a coach who is in this for the money

"He had the chance to go to Saudi Arabia before joining Rangers where he could have made maybe five times the money he has now. But that’s typical for him because he likes to work in a team where we can rebuild it and put his ideas in.”

Make no mistake, Rangers is most certainly a rebuilding project. Clement inherited a team rumbling towards the end of an era, with so many star players past their best.

Three years after winning the Premiership title under Steven Gerrard, Celtic have re-established themselves as comfortably the finest side in the country. And having moved on a host of players while spending nearly £15 million on ten new additions, this is very much Clement’s team these days.

And while Eredivisie exports Vaclav Cerny and Robin Propper struggled at Parkhead, a Rangers team transitioning from one regime to the next one should not be written off after only a few weeks together on the training ground.

"I worked with Philippe for six years,” adds Van Rumst, who also advised Clement at French giants Monaco. “We had some difficult moments during that time but many more good ones. It was all based on hard work.

“That’s how we always did it in Genk and Brugge. We trained unbelievable hours on our system so it became like a machine.

“In Genk it was amazing. We won a title. We won two more in Brugge.”

Rangers lost John Lundstram and Abdallah Sima

Van Rumst believes that, for Clement’s system to succeed, he needs a ball-playing, deep-lying central midfielder in the John Lundstram mould as well as a speedy wideman capable of stretching the opposition defence like Abdallah Sima did during a fine loan spell from Brighton and Hove Albion.

“We used the same 4-3-3 (formation) in Monaco too. When I watched Rangers last year, John Lundstram was an important player for Philippe,” Van Rumst explains, the former Sheffield United man now at Trabzonspor alongside Borna Barisic.

"He was always the low midfielder who took the ball off the centre backs, which allowed the full backs to push up. But he's left, so maybe Philippe is looking for that kind of midfielder again.”

Connor Barron has impressed so far – probably the stand-out amongst Rangers’ new additions – but he is a very different sort of midfielder to Lundstram.

"I've seen Connor Barron coming short this season, but he never goes so deep to make it a back three the way Lundstram did,” Van Rumst argues.

“The main reason we always try to make three at the back is that Philippe loves depth with his wingers. With Abdallah Sima last season on the left side, I remember his runs in behind the defence. Philippe loved that, because we did that with Krepin Diatta at Brugge who was very similar.

"He likes to have one winger who comes towards the ball and one who goes in behind. But all these patterns, they cannot be taught in one day. This is a new team for Rangers this season and it takes time to learn these movements.

"We did it with Waasland-Beveren and to be fair, that club has half the quality of Rangers. But we did it there with simple patterns, so for sure Philippe can do it in Glasgow too.

“He just needs time.”

With Rabbi Matondo’s sparkling form brought to a shuddering halt another injury blow, £3.5 million deadline day arrival Nedim Bajrami could be the man lining up in Sima’s old left-wing position over the coming weeks.