Straight-talking Philippe Clement has never been one to mince his words at Rangers.

Whilst the Belgian boss will always protect his players from the criticism of the media or the Ibrox support, Clement is never shy to speak his mind.

Over his 11 months in Glasgow the ex-Club Brugge manager has proven himself a shrewd operator with the media and did so once again as Rangers dumped Dundee.

But speaking after the Premier Sports Cup victory, Clement took the opportunity to criticise some members of the Rangers support for the treatment of one player in particular.

James Tavernier criticism ‘overstepped’ mark

What a challenging few weeks it’s been for Rangers captain James Tavernier.

As Philippe Clement tries to fuse together a new-look Ibrox squad, the Gers skipper has bore the brunt of any early criticism with familiarity truly breeding contempt.

Tavernier’s routinely flailing performances in the face of Celtic’s Daizen Maeda have also drawn huge criticism with the right-back toiling in recent Old Firm clashes.

Following the devastating 3-0 defeat at the hands of the Parkhead side, Tavernier was the subject of fierce criticism online whilst a clip of a supporter abusing the skipper outside Ibrox went viral.

On the club’s long-awaited return to Ibrox Stadium against Dundee, James Tavernier got up and running for the season with his first strike of the campaign in the 3-0 win.

Speaking after the match, Philippe Clement paid tribute to his captain and bit back at those Rangers supporters who’ve recently ‘overstepped the mark’ with criticism.

“Of course it’s not nice when you get stick,” Clement told Premier Sports. “But it’s part of being a captain.

“And for sure in the society now, things have changed from the past.

“So it was a good moment also, he felt the praise also of all the fans.

“Today when the things go well, it’s a good life to be a captain of Rangers but when things don’t go well it’s less good.

“But it needs to stay respectful. So some people overstepped the line.

“You can be critical, you can be unhappy about things, but you cannot cross a certain line.

“But it is like that and he took it in the right way with only hunger and desire to become better as a team and to work hard with all the lads in training and to raise the level.

“That’s what Tav is about, it’s what I expect from him also. It’s what I expect from a captain.

“I’ve been in the same situation before in Brugge.

“In the good periods being captain was really nice, OK in the difficult moments you need to stand on the barricades to protect everything and that’s what he’s been doing.”

Rangers manager draws line on return to Ibrox

Rangers manager Philippe Clement knows when to take his moment in the media and, make no mistake, he has done so here.

Amid the furore of the post-Old Firm reaction the Ibrox boss was calm and collected when pressed on the vociferous criticism of James Tavernier.

But after the skipper’s goal and upon the return to Ibrox, this a huge show of support from the Rangers gaffer who has also sent a clear message to the club’s fans.

Whilst paying Rangers supporters are well within their rights to express criticism and concerns, there is a line, and personal abuse and aggression towards players cannot be tolerated.

Let’s hope a line can now be drawn under the incident and the Rangers support get behind James Tavernier who is clearly a vital part of Philippe Clement’s plans in Glasgow.

The Rangers captain was also mobbed by his teammates after scoring the second goal of the game v Dundee, in a clear show of support for the right-back.

Jim White acknowledges he ‘loves’ Celtic progress and jokes at the Rangers conversation on talkSPORT.

Jim White has laughed at a Rangers claim from Alex Crook after Celtic secured a 5-1 win in the Champions League against Slovan Bratislava.

The Gers’ Old Firm rivals kicked off their European campaign with a bang on Wednesday night (18 September) at Parkhead.

It is safe to say that this left White and his co-presenter impressed while speaking live on talkSPORT on 20 September (10:14am).

He said: “Celtic, 5-1 Slovan Bratislava. Love it.”

Crook replied: “Celtic could potentially get into the play-off spots for a two-legged shoot-out for a place in the last 16, which would be brilliant for them and brilliant for Scottish football.

“Although Rangers fans probably wouldn’t agree.”

White laughed in response, clearly agreeing with this comment about the progress of his team’s rivals in Europe’s elite competition.

Jim White reacts to Rangers jibe after Celtic Champions League win

The gulf between the Light Blues and their closest rivals just continues to grow and potentially reached its peak in the week.

The Hoops were superb in the Champions League and made light of their opposition although it must be said, they aren’t the highest quality side.

This has come just weeks after they humiliated Philippe Clement’s side at Celtic Park, leaving supporters frustrated and humbled.

Although it will hurt fans to see Brenden Rodgers’ side do so well, they do provide a blueprint of how well a club in the Scottish Premiership can do.

The sale of Matt O’Riley brought in a large fee and allowed them to sign Arne Engels who has hit the ground running.

It also has to be considered that Celtic’s win in Europe will help towards the UEFA coefficient which may benefit the Gers in the coming seasons.

It isn’t nice to admit but there is plenty to envy at Parkhead which is ultimately positive for Scottish football.

Miller says the Rangers need to make “massive” off-field improvements.

Rangers must start getting their recruitment right immediately with the issue now “massive” for the Ibrox club, Kenny Miller has said.

Gers sit in third position five points behind Celtic and Aberdeen and Miller, speaking to the Monday Club podcast (17 September), believes “mistakes” have been made over the last three seasons.

The former Light Blues forward scrutinised the club after their 3-0 defeat to their Old Firm rivals, and sides with the fans in their frustration.

He said: “Unfortunately from the top, down there’s been mistakes made. Whether it be people in certain important positions, it then leads to more bad decisions because they are maybe not the right person for that role. Again, recruitment is massive. It’s been talked about for the last three seasons. It’s not to say it’s not going to come good, but it needs to be good now.

“When Michael Beale did his recruitment last year it didn’t look great. He obviously then loses his job and now Philippe’s come in and the recruitment’s been done again. It was clear to everybody that Rangers needed at least six starting footballers, not projects or squad players. We need to hit the ground running now. There’s not a lot that’s gone right over the first few months of the season. When you’re five points behind after just four games, it’s not a great look. Nothing is won or lost in August or September, but you’re five points back. It looks like a long way back.

“Everything needs to improve and you need to find a way to claw it back again but it just seems like this is what we always seem to be talking about. Even at this stage last season, we were seven points back early doors and Rangers are just having to play catch up an awful lot. Sometimes you need to just roll your sleeves up and start improving and that’s probably where the fans are feeling a bit frustrated at the moment.”

Can Rangers improve on their below-par start?

A lacklustre start to the season has seen the Ibrox club miss out on Champions League football, and already trailing in the Scottish Premiership, much to the dismay of the fans.

Add in the departure of chairman John Bennett, and a dismal defeat to Celtic in the Old Firm derby and Rangers look to be in a bad place right now.

Decisions at the club mean that the Gers are playing catch-up and need to rely on some of their leaders to step it up a gear.

With the transfer window closed, this is the squad Phillipe Clement needs to get the best out of until January, and there are players within that could help the Glasgow club out of trouble.

Rangers require a new beginning. Not a throwback: Keith Jackson explains why the Ibrox club should go cautiously with Dave King’s comeback.

John Bennett has stepped back from his role of chairman of the Ibrox club

Let’s start by wishing John Bennett a full and speedy recovery now that he’s stepped back out of the cauldron of chaos at Rangers.

At his core, Bennett is a fundamentally decent man who was so desperate to do the right thing for his football club that he was willing to plough something in the region of £24m of his own personal wealth into its coffers. And yet the outgoing chairman ended up being vilified and eventually even demonised by angry swathes of his fellow supporters, which was the most unedifying travesty of it all.

The truth is Bennett acted with entirely the best of intentions even though the last few months of his time in charge were fraught and utterly exasperating. He was both blindsided and betrayed at crucial moments over the last 12 months which is why he was left carrying the can and taking personal responsibility for the carnage which was being created all around. Of course, he made mistakes too along the way but Bennett’s biggest failing was very probably being too trusting and going about his business in the belief that those around him wanted Rangers to succeed every bit as fervently as he did.

He positively willed the likes of Michael Beale and James Bisgrove to do well in their respective roles without recognising that this B team was doing more harm than good. And it was only after Bisgrove had jumped ship to Saudi Arabia that the unsuspecting Bennett was forced to look under the bonnet to discover – to his absolute horror – the full extent of the damage.

It was when he first realised that Rangers would be locked out of Ibrox for the first few months of the campaign that the stress levels began to soar to intolerable heights and from that moment Bennett was locked into a losing battle. Having worked diligently to eat into the huge financial wastage which he calculated was costing the club around £10m a year, suddenly Bennett was faced with spending a small fortune in order to clean up the catastrophic mess which Bisgrove had left sitting in his office drawer.

He also had to front it up by breaking the disastrous news to a support which was still simmering in anger over the surrender of a potential domestic treble over the final weeks of the previous season.

They blamed Bennett for just about everything they could see in front of their noses when, behind the scenes, he was actually moving the club in a more positive direction after years of internal infighting, boardroom bloodletting and ultimate mismanagement. He attempted to provide Rangers with a unifying presence at its helm as well as a more calming, moderate and measured governance.

But Bennett was surrounded and undermined by so many malign actors that his task became impossible and, as a consequence, having been placed in charge of a basket case, Bennett now leaves behind a bin fire. He has been swallowed up and spat back out again by a club which he cares passionately about and that is a desperately sad state of affairs. But the prospect of dousing this blaze with two more years of Dave King and his gun powder brand of leadership all feels, well, a bit too Trumpian for comfort.

The South Africa based businessman has thrown his hat into the ring for a second term in the top office but Rangers might be better to thank him for his offer and quickly dismiss the idea as a step backwards in the wrong direction.

King might claim to have a plan to make Rangers great again but if that means returning to the days when he would start a fight in an empty Blue Room, then it’ll be a regression the club would be better off avoiding.

That he himself stood down following a bitter fall-out with his successor, Douglas Park, points to the residual bad blood which caused Bennett so many difficulties in his attempts to bring various boardroom factions together.

Now that the peacemaker has been forced to throw in the towel, if King and Park are put back on a collision course the collateral damage could be spectacular and, let’s face it, over the last 13 years Rangers have had quite enough of these ego fuelled sideshows and circuses.

King may have been the right man in the right place ten years ago when he picked the fight with Mike Ashley which would eventually see him seize control of the club along with Paul Murray and John Gilligan in March 2015.

But it also started a personal feud with Ashley which cost the club many millions of pounds and which was only fully resolved after Bennett settled into the position and encouraged common sense to prevail.

It is indeed ironic then that Gilligan is now taking over the chairmanship, albeit in a caretaker capacity, as he too grew tired of the endless rounds of bickering and back-stabbing during King’s tumultuous reign before stepping away from it completely. He’s unlikely to have any wish to be corralled back into the same bad tempered movie all over again.

The fact of the matter is that, after nearly a decade of fan ownership, what Rangers really need now is a new script and a fresh start – not a throwback to the same old snarling, suspicious faces. There are some seriously wealthy and credible potential investors out there, on the other side of the Atlantic and maybe even further afield, who would look upon the club as prime for a full scale takeover.

It was not all that long ago when, during his shot in the chairman’s seat. Douglas Park headed one of them off at the pass, reacting with outrage and hostility to an offer of a £60m cash injection from American businesswoman Kyle Fox.

Park simply would not entertain any notion that Rangers might be better off in the hands of others, if their investment was not similarly steeped in emotion.

As unpalatable as some may find it, that now seems like the smartest way forward for a club which is in dire need of some clear headed thinking, fresh progressive ideas, new money and a thorough leadership reboot. If that is the enduring legacy of Bennett’s last stand then who knows, maybe one day he’ll look back and think it was all worth it after all.

After the £50 million proposal at Ibrox, McGowan says many believe that Rangers’ best chance is in a Middle Eastern sovereign.

Rangers need the investment of a Middle Eastern sovereign or Texan billionaire to close the gap on Celtic, according to Stephen McGowan.

Writing in the Daily Mail (12 September), journalist McGowan addressed Graham Souness’ claims that his former club needed to spend £50million in order to level the playing field with Celtic.

McGowan highlighted that the financial gap between the two sides is widening due to Celtic playing in the Champions League, and said Gers fans are looking to the US or Middle East for a potential saviour.

He wrote: “With [Rangers’] bitter rivals set to hoover up another £40m from participation in the Champions League, many now see a Middle Eastern sovereign or a Texan billionaire as their best hope.”

Rangers face a long road ahead in the bid to catch up with Celtic

The post-mortem of the Gers’ humiliating 3-0 defeat at Celtic Park in the new season’s first Old Firm was always set to throw up questions, and throwing £50m at the problems isn’t a long-term solution.

An out-of-favour boardroom is doing itself no favours by delaying these appointments, with the prospect of US or Middle-Eastern investment now something which Gers fans will be dreaming of.

Although new ownership would help to breathe some life back into a club which has seemed rudderless for quite some time, the Ibrox faithful cannot expect the results to be immediate.

A failure to build on their last title in 2021 is seen by many as the cause of the current malaise, and the best move any new owners could make would be to invest a £50m sum on making sure the Gers have the best possible infrastructure off the field, rather than a host of new signings on it.

Pundit opinion of “Gifted”: Forgotten Rangers ace now needs a five-game run as a crucial opportunity presents itself.

Alex Lowry needs to be given a run of games in the side if he is ever going to be able to make a breakthrough at Rangers, according to Derek Ferguson.

The homegrown attacker has seen his Gers career stall badly after breaking through as a teenager and is currently stuck in the B Team without a senior appearance since the end of Michael Beale’s first season in charge.

But with Rabbi Matondo out with a long-term injury, Oscar Cortes still returning to fitness, and both Scott Wright and Todd Cantwell sold a make-or-break opportunity looks to have presented itself for the 21-year-old to stake a claim under Philippe Clement.

Ferguson believes the pressure of trying to make an impact from brief appearances off the bench has been too great for Lowry to really show what he can do and some sustained involvement could see him prove his worth to the manager.

He exclusively told Ibrox News: “I’ve always liked Alex, not just because he’s a homegrown lad, you can see that he’s a gifted player. 

“He’s had opportunities, he’s maybe not grasped them in terms of production, but he’s only had limited time on the park. 

“I discussed this with one of my friends. He probably needs to be told you’re going to get three, four, five games to prove your worth. 

“Sometimes when you’ve got these young guys and they’ve only got 45 minutes a game to go in and prove your worth.

“Maybe the pressure gets to them, maybe it’s a bit too much for them. Sometimes would it not be better to give them a run of games.” 

Alex Lowry impresses in Rangers B Team alongside Ianis Hagi

Clement has proven to be quite rigid in his assessment of which players he sees as part of his plans and those he doesn’t.

But Lowry turned down a departure to Carlisle United during the summer [News & Star, 30 August] and there is no reason why the Belgian couldn’t give him a look in now he is down to just two fit wingers in Ross McCausland and Vaclav Cerny.

The Scot has impressed in his outings for the B Team in recent weeks and surely has more of a chance of an elevation to the senior side than Ianis Hagi has, with a contract clause in the way [Daily Record, 13 August] and Clement adamant he isn’t part of the plans [Daily Mail, 31 August].