Back in 2018, when Steven Gerrard ascended Rangers' famous marble staircase, realism abounded at Ibrox. Yes, a genuine world superstar had arrived, but in the parlance of the wizened hacks of the time, he was also a 'rookie manager'.
Expectations were not at their usual pitch around Edmiston Drive for other reasons. The collapse of 2012, Pedro Caixinha's ill-fated spell and the embarrassing end to Graeme Murty's time had lowered anticipation levels to depths not seen since the early 1980s. The talk at the time, was of a three-year plan to stop Celtic winning 10 in a row. That level of forbearance would have been considered a historic anomaly unlikely to be offered to another manager, and yet it's exactly the scenario Rangers now face.
The level of difficulty in the challenge Philippe Clement surveys is perhaps unprecedented. Rangers face a far better-resourced opponent, with 10,000 extra seats in their stadium. Celtic have a squad laden with quality whose sales could further boost this massive financial advantage should it be required. Clement is also up against a manager in Brendan Rodgers whose dominance in Old Firm games, and Scottish competitions generally, is unmatched.
After a late collapse when last season's title was in Rangers' grip, root and branch change in the Ibrox leadership group was demanded by fans. Crucially, key figures within the club had come to agree. That meant no more Ryan Jack, Borna Barisic or John Lundstram who all left on free transfers and a goodbye to defensive leader Connor Goldson. Even captain James Tavernier, a hall of famer no less, is likely to depart this summer if a buyer can be found - something that has provoked remarkably few dissenting voices. While Tavernier has his faults, his consistency of availability and attacking output should have shielded him from most of the stinging criticism. It's a team game and, for the most part, the full-back went far beyond expectations with what he delivered. It matters not, he too will likely leave Govan with the club opening the doors wide on his way out.
There are consequences to such dramatic churn. Scottish football is idiosyncratic and not every player thrives here, talented or not. Even established internationals, some who performed well in the Premier League, have failed to meet the muster here. Transfers thus come with a large element or risk, especially from abroad when issues like climate, pitch quality, physicality and language can be preventative in acquiring a player's best.
Rangers have an army of people behind the scenes to ensure a smooth transition for their multi-million pound assets but sometimes, it just doesn't work. Look at Sam Lammers, a £3.5m striker who looked like he was bought from a pound shop before his loan back to the Eredivisie saw him break scoring records and flourish. Like many before him, he's clearly a talented footballer, but something just didn't click at Ibrox.
For Clement to rebuild this Rangers side in his own image he will need more than one summer window to get all his ducks in a row. The manager is highly regarded within corridors of power and there's an acceptance that changing managers midseason has caused major issues for the club. The process that saw Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Michael Beale sacked before Christmas won't be repeated. Even if things are looking rocky for the Ibrox club this term, the only likely way the Belgian will leave is through his own volition.
While things have been rocky on the pitch for the last few months, Clement remains a manager who lifted titles with two separate clubs in his homeland. He knows what it takes to win. The salvage job he did in recovering the seven-point gap that existed on his October arrival and winning the Premier Sports Cup was impressive and bodes well for his chances once he gets his own players in.
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And yet, there has been valid discontent brewing amongst Rangers fans over the style of play witnessed so far in pre-season. There's no doubt the games against Manchester United and Birmingham were a tough watch but with so many comings and goings there will have to be patience on this front. Any manager would struggle to knit this mismatched squad into a cohesive unit and Clement, as he's already memorably intoned, is no Harry Potter.
If only he had the magic wand that was the financial backing enjoyed by some of his predecessors, not least Micheal Beale. Last summer the English coach was able to spend the guts of £13m on Lammers, Cyriel Dessers and Danilo. We know how that went. Lammers is all but gone. The infuriatingly mercurial Dessers will leave after a season of baffling inconsistency. Danilo is rated by the current manager, but the jury remains out on whether his slight frame can withstand the physical barrage it will sustain in Scotland. Rather than building his team for the challenges ahead, Clement must wait to free up finances. It's a veritable jigsaw puzzle.
There's pressure on chairman John Bennett to open his cheque book but to be fair, he's already allowed around £11m to be splashed on young talent like Mohamed Diomande, Oscar Cortes, Jefte and Hamza Igamane. He's been criticised for not being public-facing enough, a valid point, but it's important to remember that the man sitting in the big chair has pumped more than £20m of his own cash into the club out of his passion for the club. That's a level of commitment to their football club that few will ever come close to matching and, at the very least, deserves respect.
With Ibrox unfinished and a return date not fixed, no CEO in place and no head of academy announced it's easy to paint Rangers as a crisis club. Little of this is Bennett's making but these are now his problems to sort out. He will also know that at Rangers, the mood music is dictated not by what's happening off the pitch, but on it. If Clement can somehow manage to steer a solid course through the early part of the season, the chairman's life will be significantly smoother.
If, as it seems more likely given the tumult in the squad, a failure to reach the Champions League is compounded by losses in the Premiership, then we will undoubtedly see Bennett and the board come under enormous pressure. But what's the alternative? American venture capitalists who think razzmatazz, Web3 and NFTs are the answer to a Scottish football club's problems? Don't make me laugh. The best people to own a Scottish club remain an organised group of those who care for it the most; fans. The best people to run it are hard-nosed business professionals with a track record and Bennett needs to appoint an experienced CEO who can lead from the front as the public face.
The one thing that both the chairman and manager need most is time. There's no easy solution, no obvious sticking plaster to any of this. It may be that to properly rebuild Rangers, there needs to be a collective reversion to the accepted wisdom of the Gerrard era. While nobody at the club will ever give up on any trophy, a three-year plan to rebuild as a force with a title at the end seems a strategy imbued with realism rather than hope.
