There are certain cliches you just can’t avoid in Scottish football, and this is especially apparent when speaking on the subject of the Old Firm. From taxi drivers to pundits to your pals down the pub, we’ve all heard them, and probably said them at one point or another too.
On the week of a match between Celtic and Rangers, for instance, the pedestrians of Glasgow know to be on their guard for flying form books, which always go out the window.
The one I wish to address here though is the notion that in this town, second is last. For Celtic to finish behind Rangers (a queer old notion just at the minute, granted) or vice-versa means that the season has been a write-off, wholesale changes are required, and the manager usually pays with his job.
In any ‘normal’ season, this is how things would come to pass. In fact, in recent seasons for Rangers, simply looking as though they may finish behind a Celtic team that enjoys a level of player and a level of finance way beyond the Ibrox club’s means by the autumn has been cause to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst was sacked in November 2022 just months after leading his side to the Europa League Final, after an embarrassing Champions League campaign, granted, but chiefly for the sin of falling nine points behind Ange Postecoglou’s Celtic.
It was a similar story for Michael Beale, who was sacked just seven games into last season having fallen seven points behind Brendan Rodgers’ side.
And what do you know? Here we are again. Taking the above Beale record into consideration, the fact that Philippe Clement is five points behind Celtic with just five games gone of this campaign should perhaps be worrying the big Belgian.
Well, it probably would be if he hadn’t just been awarded for his year in the job without any real discernible progress on the field to show for it with a big, fat new contract from out of the blue.
The real stat that should be concerning him though is that he has now gone five games without a win against Celtic, with four defeats and a draw snatched at the death at Ibrox last season that was celebrated like a victory, despite the fact it was a result that put the destiny of the title back into Celtic’s hands.
Both Graeme Souness and Martin O’Neill were put up last week to preview last weekend’s first Old Firm fixture of the season, and both separately told a story that was eerily similar but for the clubs involved.
Both men had arrived in Glasgow to take up their posts, and committed the heinous crime of admitting that they would take four defeats in games against their city rivals if it meant their own team would still win the league. Both men guffawed as they looked back on their naivety, and delivered the same zinger at the end of the tale: ‘I didn’t make that mistake again’.
Clement is now in the position of not only failing to get Rangers to the top of the league, but his team are being ritually humiliated by their great rivals whenever they face them.
There is a maxim about social media that your aim every day should be to avoid becoming the butt of the joke, and the same could be said for Scottish football. Some Rangers fans may not have aided their cause in that regard by turning up at Ibrox on Sunday night to verbally abuse the players – particularly captain James Tavernier – but it is their team that is making day-to-day life hard to bear for all those angry Bears out there just now.
Given the hurt they are feeling and the ridicule they are being exposed to, the natural conclusion for many will be that Clement must pay the price, and that he should be chased out of Ibrox as both Van Bronckhorst and Beale ultimately were.
The law of Scottish football cliches decrees it after all; if a Rangers manager fails to beat Celtic, he will be sacked.
It may well though be time for the Rangers board to resist the temptation to give in to the comfortable familiarity of laying the blame for their on-field woes squarely at the door of the manager’s office.
Now, I m well aware that another Scottish football cliché is to ask whenever a manager’s future is discussed; ‘well, who would do a better job?’
This one is usually nonsense, as there are always a queue of eminently qualified managers out there willing to jump onto even the shoogliest of pegs, particularly at a club the size of Rangers.
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But while Clement deserves the scrutiny and even the vast majority of the stick that is currently coming his way, the recent trend of backing their manager financially (as far as is now possible) only to sack him in the early knockings of the season hasn’t exactly proven a wise course of action.
Instead, it has been rinse and repeat, and Rangers have generally arrived here, exactly where we are once again at this moment in time.
On the field, in the table, on the balance sheet, the hard truth is that Rangers are currently miles behind Celtic in every regard. Clement’s record and his signings over the piece may leave much to be desired, but judging him on matches against Celtic no longer makes any sense.
Would it be palatable to even write off this season in regards to an expectation to win the league?
Clement should be able to keep in touch with Celtic given the relative advantages he enjoys over the rest of the division, and if he can do that, get his team to gel and get used to what he wants from them without the spectre of chômage (yes, I googled it) hanging over him, then surely Rangers will be in a better position come January to put up some sort of fist of it in the New Year derby?
More importantly, they would surely also be better positioned to challenge Celtic next season to actually win the league.
If they always do what they have always done, they are always going to be second – or last, if you prefer – in Glasgow.
