The manager of Ibrox implied that Dundee was lucky to draw with his title-chasing team at Dens Park.
Rangers manager Philippe Clement, who said that Dundee was “lucky” to have earned a draw yesterday night, has come under fire for allegedly employing deflection strategies to shield his team.
The Ibrox team’s goalless draw at Dens Park has left them three points behind Celtic, their bitterest rivals, in the Scottish Premiership title race. Many of their dejected supporters believe that a win in the season’s final Old Firm derby at Parkhead next month will now be necessary to give their rapidly dwindling trophy hopes a much-needed boost.
And during his post-match debrief, Belgian manager Clement caused quite a stir when he indicated he was happy with his underperforming team’s response to last weekend’s devastating 3-2 loss to Ross County in Dingwall.
Sky Sports pundits Kris Boyd, James McFadden and Chris Sutton all unanimously agreed his remarks don’t sit well after refusing to believe Brendan Rodgers’ Hoops have been handed the initiative in the title race with five post-split fixtures remaining. Asked by host Eilidh Barbour if he agreed with Clement’s thoughts shortly after the full-time whistle, Boyd responded: “No I don’t think in the terms of the chances created. I didn’t really see any clear-cut. Rangers got into plenty of good positions in the pitch. Fabio Silva I touched on in the first-half, there was one in the second as well and he was sleeping. When you get into those positions as a forward player you’ve got to get on the move and make up the mind up of your winger.
“I said it at the weekend, Rangers can’t depend on one player coming back and making a difference. It has to be better. You can’t go to Ross County and get beat. You can’t come here tonight and draw when you are in a title race. Listen, full credit to Ross County and Dundee but Rangers have got to be a lot better than they are.
“You are talking about big players stepping up. Cantwell, what has he done again? Lawrence? You are looking for more. I think Sima – yes he is coming back from injury – but you are looking for more. Kemar Roofe, again, he’s not played football in a long time but Rangers never really created anything for him. He’s a penalty box striker, if you get the ball in there he has shown he will score goals. Desseres came on and it didn’t really work. From a forward point of view the substitutions were poor. Rangers have got problems at this moment in time.”
Celtic legend Sutton expressed a similar view of Clement’s evaluation, saying: “Until tonight, I’ve been tremendously impressed with Philippe Clement. What game he was watching is unknown to me. To say Dundee was lucky would be an understatement. He did admit there was no spark with the Rangers. He advised against drawing hasty judgments, but the conclusion is that they haven’t performed well in the crucial few games.
“It’s come to the business end of the season and they needed to build momentum and they are losing momentum at this moment in time and that is not a good look. Unfortunately for him, people look at the whole season and if they finish second, we know second is last in Glasgow. We saw the reaction from the Rangers fans at the end, they aren’t happy. He’s got this Rangers team back into a title race and then all of a sudden they are crumbling.”
McFadden claimed Clement was attempting to protect his players from the inevitable backlash that has followed. He added: “The more he spoke, the more I’m thinking that he’s trying to protect his players. If he comes out now and says, ‘Not good enough, didn’t create enough, not enough tempo, we looked tired, we don’t have enough energy…’
“You don’t have the time to go and try to pick your players back up if you come out publicly and slate them and say it’s not good enough and we’re too far off in terms of the title. So straight away he goes on the defensive. You see him at the end deep in a conversation with his assistant manager.
If he thought as he expressed during the news conference—that ‘it was unlucky, we created chances.’ He made the deliberate decision to take care of his guys because if he goes after them right now, they have no chance at all of winning the championship. It appears to be a collection of players who need to be informed their work isn’t good enough, so I’m not sure if it will succeed.”
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