Clement was charged with the arduous task of trying to wrestle the power Celtic and Brendan Rodgers had over Scottish football.
Rodgers had already seen off Michael Beale in the first four months of his second spell as the Celtic manager, so the Ibrox club looked to the Belgian to try and stop the Parkhead club.
And now, four months on from his sacking, Clement has shared the Rangers board’s bizarre plan to catch Celtic and it really doesn’t make any sense at all.
Clement admits Rangers were not ‘financially sustainable’ in the race to catch Celtic
Celtic is a financial powerhouse. The Parkhead club’s partnership with Adidas as well as Celtic’s player-trading model has kept the Hoops streets ahead of Rangers and any other club in Scotland for decades now.
Across the city, the picture was very different as Clement shares the challenges he had trying to keep up with Celtic.
Clement told The Scottish Football Podcast [1m 46s], “Yeah, I think you need to go back to one year ago. What was the story of the club at that moment? So the story was that the club was not financially sustainable anymore, like they were spending one year before.
“So that was the story of the transfer window of last year that’s been said to me, to the recruitment team also, that the money, that there was not fresh investment in the club, but the money available for the transfers would be the sale of players.
“So the amount you can get out of that, that was not much at the end, because the squad was with a lot of older players. So people didn’t want to pay any more for them.
“Six players were out of contract, so they were left for free. And there was not a lot of young talents that were sellable, because not many people were interested.
“So in the end, there was not much money coming into the club.”
Rangers’ transfer ‘plan’ to catch Celtic
As well as having no money, the Ibrox club had no sellable assets either. So that makes Clement’s admission about Rangers’ plan to catch Celtic even more bizarre.
“The other part to make transfers was to lower the wages and the amount that was lowered, that could have been used in the transfer market,” continues Clement.
“So it was more than 25% of the wages that’s been lowered in that period, in the budget. And that money was used to build the squad. And the idea was, and that was clearly set by the board, that the club needed three, four transfer windows to get at the level of Celtic.
“Because you have to gain money again by bringing young players in, developing them, making them better, selling them, and like this, getting money to make the squad better and better in the next two, three years.”
To be fair, it is a plan that Celtic have used for decades but the Parkhead club had players to sell year in, year out to achieve this. Rangers don’t.
Celtic have also developed this strategy over the course of the last 25 years, not two or three as Rangers had hoped to.
In the end, Celtic’s vast resources and experience in the player-trading model still keeps them ahead of Rangers despite fresh investment from 49ers Enterprises.
And as long as the Celtic board and the team on the park continue to do what they have been over the last 25 years, there is nothing to worry about from the team across the other side of the city.
