Philippe Clement has had his hands tied since taking over at Rangers, this doesn’t make him entirely blamless for surrendering the Scottish Premiership title so meekly.
The 2-1 loss to Celtic saw a mixture of players, some running themselves into the ground, whilst others, who are supposed to be senior members of the squad, hid.
The manager needs to take a step back and reflect on some of the decisions that he took at Parkhead, if he does, Philippe Clement will see where Rangers desperately must improve.
Philippe Clement also made mistakes as Rangers surrender
From the moment that the starting XI was revealed and it showed that Todd Cantwell had been dropped, there were alarm bells.
Before his untimely injury, Cantwell was Rangers best player and had started to find the net consistently.
Tom Lawrence is capable of the spectacular, but he is a moments player, not someone you want in midfield against a young and dynamic opposition.
Cantwell’s exclusion hasn’t been fully explained by Clement, however, an Instagram post earlier in the week looks considerably more damning now.
With the worst individual performance in the Scottish Premiership this season, John Lundstram had a shocker.
Even ignoring his passing and defending statistics, his own goal and red card all but killed Rangers chances of getting the much-needed victory.
Clement has been too loyal to Lundstram.
He shouldn’t have been immune to the drop and his effort levels alone could see him never again line up in Light Blue.
Rangers best outfield player was Fabio Silva – Ben Davies wasn’t far behind – so why was he taken off and a clearly tiring Cyriel Dessers left on?
Silva had tormented Alistair Johnston throughout the game, his final ball or decision wasn’t always perfect, but nobody could fault the effort or impact he had.
With 10 men, his pace and energy through the middle could have helped Rangers cause.
The other substitute that was questioned, was Ross McCausland coming on for John Souttar.
It made sense in terms of Sterling having to drop into defence to cover the injured Souttar but McCausland has offered nothing for months.
That he got into three excellent positions to shoot or find a teammate in the six-yard box and did nothing on each occasion sums up his recent outings.
Injuries have clearly hampered Philippe Clement’s ability to fully impart his game plan, against Celtic though, he found out who can and can’t be trusted.
At Hampden in two-week’s time, he has to learn from his mistakes if the season is to end with the sort of positivity that is needed to lift the current gloom and the early whispers of pressure above the manager’s head.
