Insight: Why Rangers fans really turned on Philippe Clement | OneFootball

August 14 and Ibrox Noise carried out a poll on Rangers fans, start of the season, Rangers already having dropped 2 points at Tynecastle and about to face Celtic after the demolishing of Ross County at Hampden.

We asked who backed Clement at this point, and the result was overwhelming – 91% of fans were right behind the manager.

Fast forward to the Aberdeen defeat in October, and it crashed completely to 9%.

That’s right, the 9% who had been against him pre-Celtic had now grown massively to 91%.

After the Celtic debacle and his response, it had dipped notably to 76%, the lowest it had properly been – and then after that Dons loss it was finished.

In fact, Ibrox Noise had called it out definitively after Killie and one fan, who will remain long in our memory, said ‘call yourself a Rangers page?’.

After the Dons a match later, few-to-none were on Clement’s side any more.

Between August 14 to October 21, Rangers fans changed their minds completely on Clement and went from the sunshine out of his backside, to driving him to the airport themselves.

We have never before seen such an extreme from one way to the other, with a bewilderingly tribal backing of the manager (ffs) no matter what he did, to a very aggressive about-turn after a couple of months of dire results. 91% in favour on August 14, to 91% against in October.

So why did this happen?

It happened because Clement tried too many times to both pull the wool over fans’ eyes, while making all the same errors he always had, while also shifting goalposts repeatedly regarding when fans would actually start seeing a half-decent Rangers team.

His promise early season of ‘this team will be much better in October’ is probably the biggest rod for his back – the Belgian promised Rangers fans around August that they would be seeing a much more organised, cohesive and impressive Rangers in October, but it’s simply gotten worse and worse under his watch.

To then recently claim he needs another couple of months (again) to get the side going shows he doesn’t have a plan, and fans have realised he’s not taking the club forward at all.

But the final nail in his coffin? Being this far behind both Aberdeen AND Celtic after a full quarter of the season’s fixtures. Warburton was actually, staggeringly worse, he was an absurd 15 points off the pace after 12 in 16/17, but he had had absolutely no money that summer and had to rely on mercenaries, crocks and freebies like Barton, Kranjcar and Senderos. Pedro however was only 4 points behind after 12 having signed a tonne of players for some significant money. Gerrard was 6 points behind after 12 on his maiden season having spent about £11M.

In simple terms, despite having a decent £16M to spend, Clement, pro-rata, is having the worst start in living memory for a Rangers manager who actually had a few quid for the budget. He’s worse than Pedro, Warburton and way below Gerrard. Gio was actually only 4 behind Angie after 12 during that ill-fated UCL campaign, while relying on Ben Davies and Leon King as his defence.

These coupled with a tonne of other things which are too detailed to list are why Rangers fans have given up on Clement.

It’s nothing to do with the board, and even ‘sack the board’ has actually calmed down – this board gave Clement the highest summer budget any Rangers manager has had outside Michael Beale and Gio (albeit Ross Wilson picked all the players) and he (and Nils Koppen) have wasted almost the entire lot.

This is some of the many reasons fans have lost all patience with Clement.

No credit left in the bank, indeed Philippe.