Sport
Graeme Souness reveals Rangers confession Clement made
Graeme Souness shared a stage with Philippe Clement at Glasgow’s Armadillo on Sunday night. But that’s as close as the pair are likely to get for the time being.
Rumours of a possible long-awaited return to Ibrox for the man who sparked a Rangers revolution in the 1980s have never fully gone away since the idea was floated by chairman John Bennett. But although Souness has spent the last couple of days back in the city, he confirmed yesterday he will not be taking up the offer of a permanent role as part of the club’s hierarchy.
And despite playing a part in the process that led to Clement’s appointment earlier this season, he admits he wouldn’t touch the Belgian’s job with a bargepole. Asked for his verdict on the first six months of Clement’s stint in his old hotseat, Souness said: “He has been fantastic. I was with him at a thing in the Armadillo and he was very impressive.
“He is getting a very different tune out of players who were struggling a bit. I saw them playing against
Aberdeen when they lost at home when Michael Beale was the manager. I was thinking, ‘Whoever comes next has got a job on his hands!’.
“But he’s done what you’re asked to do as a new manager. You can’t come in and change everything right away. But you are looking to get a different tune out of them and he’s certainly done that.”
It was Record Sport who first revealed Souness had been willingly roped into the manhunt to find a new boss shortly after Beale had been sent packing. Following his contribution to that interview process, Souness was earmarked for a more full-time role as an advisor to the board.
But, albeit without going into any detail, Souness has confirmed he will not be returning to his old stomping ground in an official capacity. Somewhat tersley, he said: “That’s been and gone. We spoke about it but it’s not going to happen. I’m not going to enlarge on it.”
And in any case, at the age of 70, he seems perfectly satisfied watching Clement go about his work from afar. Souness added: “I didn’t appoint him. I was like everyone else at the interview process. And he was very impressive. His CV was very good – the best CV we had to look at – and he interviewed very well. For me, his presentation was a 10 out of 10. But he told me last night it was the first presentation he’d ever done.
“So it was all very impressive. He is an impressive character. He speaks English well, although he thinks he doesn’t. He’s just got a very impressive way with him. He can hold a room. When I am listening to a manager speak, I always take myself back to when I was a player. I think, ‘If I am in the dressing room, am I going to listen to him or not?’.
“That was certainly the case when we were interviewing, I thought, ‘This is a man I would listen to’.
“When I was talking to him in the interview I said to him, ‘This job is like nothing else’. I’m Scottish, I’d been to Ibrox maybe eight times when I was a kid, I had played for Scotland, I had played for big football clubs.
“But nothing in that prepared me for being manager of Rangers. It’s a unique job which brings unique challenges. You are expected to win every game. It was a shock to me.
“Drawing a game can be a bit of a disaster in some people’s eyes. I explained that to him. I said, ‘If you get it right, it will be the best job you have ever had. On the downside, if it doesn’t go well you might be looking at it as the worst job’.
“That is the demand of being a Rangers manager. It is win at all costs, you have just got to win. There is no finishing second in May and saying, ‘We have had a good season’. That is not a good season in the eyes of the supporters. I got that pretty quickly.”
And Souness believes the task Clement is squaring up to is far greater than the one he took on in 1986 when he arrived from Sampdoria and set about turning the landscape of Scottish football on its head. He said: “His job is far harder than the one I had. I had a budget to work with. We had as much money as all the clubs in England at the time.
“They were banned from Europe while we were a wealthy club and we could compete. What a statement it was bringing in the current England captain in Terry Butcher. That was the catalyst for everything we did.
“Man United and Spurs wanted him and we got him. Everything after that made it very easy for me when I was targeting players and trying to convince them to come to Glasgow.”
By comparison, Clement is having to wheel and deal his way around the European market in order to build a squad deemed fit for purpose. But, in six months, he has picked up the mess Beale left behind and carried Rangers two points clear at the top of the table with just nine league games remaining.
And Souness believes Clement is about to finish what he started by winning back the title, despite Saturday’s defeat at home to Motherwell. He said: “I think he has got a great chance.”
Graeme Souness was promoting Viaplay’s live and exclusive coverage of Celtic v Livingston and Hibernian v Rangers on Sunday. Viaplay is available to stream from viaplay.com or via your TV provider on Sky, Virgin TV and Amazon Prime as an add-on subscription.”
