STEPHEN McGOWAN: There's only one thing Patrick Stewart can say to appease Rangers fans … Clement's a goner

Forget all the schtick about a young squad, a period of transition and the need for two or three transfer windows to get things right.

Philippe Clement has promised a media update from Rangers chief executive Patrick Stewart. And the only thing the new CEO can really say to appease an irate fanbase now is that Clement is a goner. Nothing else will cut it.

When a club has lost £17.2million and slashed the wage bill, it’s difficult to paint lipstick on a pig.

Stewart might promise to bring Rangers out of the January window stronger than they started. You can put the kettle on for more talk of developing a player-trading model capable of giving Celtic a run for their money. An appeal to give the manager more time to get it right is more likely than not.

That might well be the only realistic, pragmatic line to take at a time when Celtic enjoy a vast financial advantage, play Champions League football and sell players for tens of millions of pounds every year.

The trouble is that supporters don’t want to hear that stuff. They’ve heard enough promises of jam tomorrow.

Igamane, centre, has been a bright spark for Rangers but even he looked dumbfounded at Dens

A 1-1 draw with a threadbare, down-to-the-bones, injury-stricken Dundee felt like end-of-days stuff. The night when an enraged fanbase reached the point of no return.

The team bus had barely packed the kit in the hamper when the Rangers Supporters Association were calling for ‘real leadership from our new chairman and chief executive’ and ‘decisive action’ to relieve the manager of his duties.

The Rangers board don’t want to sack Philippe Clement. They don’t want to get back on the rinse-and-repeat cycle of expensively sacking a manager at the turn of the year, launching another squad clear-out and building another one from scratch. Why would they?

They tried that by binning Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Michael Beale – and what did it get them? A crippling compensation bill and a guy dropping points right, left and centre in the footballing hot spots of Paisley, Motherwell and Dundee.

Under Clement, Rangers are a team with bipolar tendencies. Put them under the Ibrox floodlights on a Thursday night in the Europa League against Tottenham or Steaua Bucharest and they’re lively and upbeat.

Put them under the floodlights of Dens Park on a Thursday night against a team with a fraction of the budget, 10 injuries and two goalkeepers on the bench and they lack the creativity or the depth to beat Dundee. And that’s not an isolated example.

Since Christmas, Rangers have dropped more away points than Celtic have in the last nine months. Former striker Kris Boyd says that record is a ‘disgrace’ and he’s not wrong.

Rangers players Propper, left, and Cerny look crestfallen after another failure away from home

One fans association have already decided that Clement should be sacked

After that display in Tayside, the stats focused on Clement’s team winning just three of their 11 away games in the Premiership this season.

Go back further and the broader picture is even more damning. Since January last year, this Rangers side have won only eight of their 21 league games away from home. That’s a 40 per cent win rate and, for a team with their vast wage bill, 24 points from a possible 63 is a lamentable record.

The consequence is that league points are less of an issue now than they should be. Fifteen behind Celtic, with an inferior goal difference, the Premiership barely matters a jot now.

The only real question is whether Clement is the man to take the team forward. And, if not, who will look at the last three years at Rangers and think the job of manager is anything but an act of career hari-kari?

For now, Clement clings to office. And directors might see a chance to buy some time with back-to-back home games against struggling St Johnstone and Aberdeen sides, followed by a Scottish Cup shooty-in against non-league Fraserburgh.

They might even fancy their chances of going to Old Trafford and grabbing a Europa League result against a Manchester United team even flakier than themselves.

From the end of the month, the away games take a dark turn. A gruesome run begins with a trip to Tannadice to on-form Dundee United followed by games at Hearts, Kilmarnock – on a surface they loathe – Celtic, Dundee (again), then Aberdeen. They’ve already dropped points this season at five of the six.

Ironically, the only thing showing any real sign of improvement under Clement are the performances against Celtic. Like so many squads in the Premiership, the depth and the quality isn’t there to play three games a week and rotate key players and, given the sums spent, it really should be.

Where the Belgian repeatedly bangs on about a young, inexperienced squad, the average age of the starting 11 at Dens Park was actually 25. Goalkeeper Liam Kelly is 28, captain Robin Propper 31. Goalscorer Vaclav Cerny is 27 while Ianis Hagi is no wet behind the years rookie at 26. While Jefte and Hamza Igamane can be legitimately considered raw talents with potential, youth and inexperience is far less of a problem for this Rangers squad than the most basic component of all. Ability.

Directors bought into Clement’s vision for the future by pinning another 12 months on his contract last summer and that raised a question. Can Rangers really afford to sack him?

If fans drift away and season-ticket renewals come under threat, Patrick Stewart might be asked to answer a slightly different question. When things are this bad, how can they afford to keep him?

Who can blame Taylor if he’s unhappy being Tierney’s stooge?

To hear the way people speak about Kieran Tierney, his Celtic unveiling should be quite the spectacle.

The press conference will start with Brendan Rodgers pushing him up Celtic Way in a wheelchair, cheered by misty-eyed fans.

Once he reaches the main stand they’ll ease him into a stairlift to continue his journey to the boardroom where he’ll carefully lift the pen – trying not to break a wrist – and sign a contract guaranteeing no more than 20 games a season. In a good year.

Some of the concerns raised over Tierney’s injury record are fair enough. His only first-team appearance this season came against Crystal Palace in the Carabao Cup and was cut short by cramp. Before that, his last start was Scotland’s 1-1 draw with Switzerland at Euro 2024 when a hamstring injury ruled him out for four months.

Injury-prone Tierney is stretchered off during Scotland’s game with Switzerland

Brendan Rodgers consoles Greg Taylor after Celtic fans sang Tierney’s name

Knee surgery played a significant part in his Arsenal downfall. By the time he fought his way back to fitness, Mikel Arteta had signed Oleksandr Zinchenko and he’d fallen out of fashion.

Latterly it felt as though Arteta would rather pull a random pensioner off the street than play one of the most talented Scottish players of his generation at left-back. Even when he was fit as a fiddle.

The Tierney who returns to Celtic, then, is not the young thruster of old. While he’s still just 27, the last time he managed 60 appearances in a season was back in 2017-18, when Brendan Rodgers could say what he liked about supporters without the Green Brigade taking the mick.

For that reason alone, Rodgers will need another left back capable of playing 20 to 30 first-team games per annum. And the perfect man for the job is Greg Taylor.

The trouble is that recent events have made Taylor feel under-appreciated. Celtic seem reluctant to pay him the wage of a 27-year-old senior player with international and Champions League experience. A section of the support clearly don’t fancy him at all. Even the manager who talks him up on a weekly basis is making plans to replace him.

Celtic clearly need a ready and reliable sidekick to deputise for Tierney when his body lets him down. If Greg Taylor feels that he’s more than an unloved understudy wheeled out for the odd home game against Ross County and Dundee, he might reckon he’s better off somewhere else.