If there’s one man who was relieved to see Patrick Stewart walk through the door at Ibrox this week it was Philippe Clement. Over six months on from the departure of James Bisgrove as CEO the Ibrox club finally have an executive back at the helm. And that, Clement hopes, should let him focus on the football.
The Belgian manager has previously suggested things have crossed his desk that “no manager in the world should deal with” amidst a vacuum of leadership in recent months. With Bisrove, John Bennett and head of football operations Creag Robertson all departing the club in 2024, Clement had unintentionally become the continuity figure off the park at Ibrox.
Stewart’s appointment comes in tandem with Fraser Thornton’s as non-executive chairman. Thornton will leave the day-to-day running of Rangers to Stewart, who will shoulder the burden of Ibrox leadership with Clement.
“Now I can do my job fully on the sporting side. I lost some time along the way with that. I cannot say if it had a big influence on where the team is now,” Clement said when asked if his squad would benefit from an ability to only focus on the football from now on.
“I cannot say that. Maybe in the amount of sleep I had the last couple of months, yes, for sure [it will improve[. And the amount of time I had with my wife, yes, for sure. So maybe she will be more happy in the future.
“No, it's just about that. Everybody can do his job and have a really good feeling with Patrick, with Nils [Koppen] who also has different responsibilities from a few months ago. So that we can go in the right direction with the club.”
While Clement is focused on talking football in the future, the fall-out from Sunday’s League Cup Final saw him do anything but in Friday’s press conference previewing a home meeting with Dundee. The week has been dominated by the failure of the VAR team on the day to spot a clear and obvious penalty after Liam Scales fouled Vaclav Cerny in extra-time.
Clement spoke to head of referring Willie Column in the days after the incident with Collum subsequently speaking publicly on the SFA’s VAR show about an ‘unacceptable’ decision.
Asked if the club had received an apology for the incident, Clement continued: “That’s not a question for me. So it's good that Patrick is here now to address all these questions and all these non-sporting things because in the last six months, I've been talking a lot about stadiums and seats and a lot of things that are not my business, to be honest. But I was the only one speaking in the club. So with that kind of questions for the future, that's for Patrick to address. I can focus on the football.
"I think Willie Collum was really clear in what he said about [the decision]. Maybe other people can do it also, but that's between the club and other people. That's not my job to be involved in. Again, it's not my job to say what the sanctions would be. That's the job of the SFA and Willie Collum.
"My job is to get my team ready for the next game, mentally, physically, technically, tactically. That's my job, not all the other things and all the politics around all these things, because if I put all my attention to that, I will stop doing my job really well and that's [focusing on] the sporting side of the club here.
Rangers are back in Scottish Premiership action tomorrow when they welcome Dundee to Ibrox. Clement has no fresh injury concerns and while reluctant to put a timeframe on John Souttar’s lay-off, he did admit the defender “will not play before the end of the month”.
"Because sometimes some things go faster, sometimes go a little bit slower and then you can say, 'OK, it was expected at that moment and it's not there yet'. For sure he will not play this month."
One player who is on the verge of first-team minutes is Oscar Cortes. The Colombian is back in the matchday squad tomorrow as he seeks his first minutes in Clement’s squad since starting at Tannadice during a 1-0 win over Dundee United three months ago.
Cortes played 45 minutes in the Glasgow Cup Final this Tuesday as the Rangers B team defeated Celtic 3-2 at Lesser Hampden. Clement was not convinced off the back of the performance that any young stars are quite ready to supplement his options in the first-team. His focus remains on finding a gap between the youth level and first-team that will give young players the best chance of making the jump.
"Not after that game because it was not an amazing game to be honest and they know also themselves,” he said when asked if anyone in the B team had convinced him of their suitability for the first-team following Tuesday's match.
“There is still a gap to take. To be in the starting 11, I don't speak about getting playing minutes or experiences, but really to be in the starting 11, I think the gap is still there. But it's a logical thing also.
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“Also from Celtic, nobody is starting with the first-team. There is a big gap in between. We talked about that already a lot, about academies in Scotland and then expectations with being at Rangers and competing to get domestic titles, domestic cups and European football against top European teams. To close that gap, I think there need to be steps in between.
"In the club, we had a lot of talks about that during this past year. In the SFA, people [are trying] to make things better to close down the gap [but] it's something you cannot close down in one month. There need to be a lot of actions made for the future."
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