Rangers: Clement remains under pressure despite rout over Nice
Rangers manager Philippe Clement (Credit: Rangers FC)
Rangers manager Philippe Clement remains in a battle to survive at Ibrox despite a 4-1 victory against Nice in the Europa League.
The result has catapulted the Gers into the top eight, which would secure automatic progression to the last 16 of the competition.
Vaclav Cerny, Mohamed Diomande and Hamza Igamane struck the target as the Light Blues recovered from last weekend’s home draw against Dundee United.
The share of the spoils with Jim Goodwin’s side increased the pressure on a beleaguered Clement after what has been a poor start to the season.
Rangers are third in the Scottish Premiership, nine and 11 points behind Aberdeen and league leaders Celtic respectively.
Joshua Barrie from the Rangers Review said: “Strangely there has been a real contrast between the form domestically and in European competitions.
“The club are in a really good place in the Europa League as they are now seven away games unbeaten under Clement which is so different when you compare to recent defeats against Aberdeen and Kilmarnock.
“The optimism has been so low, there has been questions over the manager’s future and I think he needs to do a lot more domestically, but it was a huge result against Nice and to get four goals against a team in one of the top five leagues is really impressive.”
Barrie also looked ahead to Sunday afternoon’s visit to St Johnstone and touched upon the issues with Rangers’ domestic form.
He continued: “I would probably expect that they will not get that level of performance against St Johnstone as that has just been the pattern of Clement’s time at the club.
“They have hardly put a foot wrong in Europe, but in the Premiership it has been a totally different story.
“There has not been a game in the league or League Cup this season where you have thought they had a dominant 90 minutes, when they have actually scraped by on a number of occasions.”
The Rangers Review editor concluded by stressing how the Nice result cannot be an isolated incident: “They have got two Old Firm games over the next month as well as Tottenham coming to Ibrox and it feels like Rangers are one bad result away from real unrest.
“This has to be the start of Clement putting together a run of results that he has not had since he arrived at the club.”
