Philippe Clement makes excuses for Rangers’ ropey form with childish ‘£30m’ reference to Celtic

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Philippe Clement is a man under pressure even after he steered Rangers to his first-ever win over Celtic this year.

The Rangers boss failed on his last six attempts to beat Celtic as Brendan Rodgers dominated the Glasgow Derby fixture over the last 18 months.

But now, with his first win under his belt, Clement took the shine off the victory after Rangers bottled their next game against Hibs with a 3-3 draw at Easter Road.

Ahead of Rangers’ game against Dundee at Dens Park, Clement took another opportunity to talk about Celtic but the Ibrox boss resorted to being childish rather than speaking like an adult as bemoaned the Parkhead club’s financial power.

Rangers boss Philippe Clement bemoans Celtic’s £30m transfer spend

Clement told The Scottish Sun, “It’s something that is necessary [squad rotation] in seasons like now, with that amount of games. We had talks about it.

“I don’t read everything, but people tell me things sometimes. There’s been a lot of fuss about rotation.  I explained it is a normal thing.

“It’s not only a normal thing here, look at the weekend…our rivals in this city, how many players did they change from the weekend before?

“And they spent £30 million in the summer on players who are not all the time in the starting eleven.

“Or by far not. So, yes, it is an important part.

“We don’t have the same chequebook in that way, so we have to work hard to make it better by getting talents in or to get players out of our academy, even better.”

The fact Clement can’t even say Celtic’s name shows you that he is playing to a certain gallery that loves that kind of immature nonsense.

And it’s strange, there was no talk of budgets or transfer spends after his team beat Celtic or even the likes of Motherwell, St Johnstone and Hearts.

It seems that this excuse only comes out when Rangers suffer a result that negatively impacts the team or draws heat on the Ibrox manager.

If Rangers lose vs Dundee and the impact on Celtic

Rangers head to Tayside to face Dundee tonight 24 hours after Celtic beat Dundee United to go 16 points clear at the top of the Scottish Premiership.

The Hoops also have an incredible goal-difference advantage having scored 29 goals more than Rangers with 20 games played.

Should the Ibrox club drop more points on the road then the gap will either remain the same or extend to 15 points with both teams playing the same number of games.

With the goal difference being so large, that effectively is like having an extra point on the board so there is little margin of error for Clement tonight as he looks to try and keep as close to Celtic as he possibly can.