PHILIPPE Clement has dismissed suggestions the relationship between his Rangers players and their supporters has been damaged by their recent slip-ups in the cinch Premiership following a series of high-profile flashpoints last weekend.
Fabio Silva gestured towards the Union Bears ultras group following his goal in the 4-1 win over Kilmarnock at Ibrox on Sunday and his team mates Borna Barisic and Jack Butland exchanged words with fans when they were signing autographs outside the stadium afterwards.
Clement revealed that how his charges interact with their followers will be changed next season as he gave his thoughts on each of the incidents yesterday at his pre-match press conference ahead of the meeting with Celtic, who are three points clear of them with three league fixtures remaining, at Parkhead this afternoon.
However, the Belgian, whose team can still complete a League Cup, Premiership and Scottish Cup treble this month despite their league loss to Ross County and draw with Dundee last month, stressed there were no issues between the two parties entering a run of important games.
READ MORE: The Brazen Head to Ibrox Museum: Henry Winter's Rangers v Celtic tour
“What is the situation with Borna and Jack?” he said. “At a lot of clubs in the world or here in this city or here in this league they do not give out autographs or pictures, not before the game or after the game. You all know this.
“But we do. Before the game, after the game. And that is maybe the back side of having a team that is doing better and better. There are more demands around that, more and more people.
“But the players cannot be also all the time giving autographs and pictures. They sometimes have to be somewhere like Jack for example to the (PFA Scotland) awards ceremony and take his family home first. But people don’t understand that at the moment.
“It is something we will organise before next season, to do it in a better way. All the fans can have their moment in the season, but it cannot be everyone at the same moment. That is not possible.
“So that was the case with the two guys and then you get some people shouting something because they are frustrated and because the organisation is not in a good way.”
READ MORE: Rangers manager has relished getting middle finger from Celtic fans
Asked if he was confident the Rangers players and fans still had a strong bond, Clement said: “Yes, of course, otherwise we don’t have five, six hundred people waiting to get autographs and pictures if there is no connection.
“If there was no connection then they would stand there all booing or not being there at all. They would all be at home. It is the other side of success of the last couple of months.
“The people are happy with the players, but then you can have one or two individuals who shout something and you get this situation. But I think it is important to not give too much attention to one or two individuals and then forget all the positive people who were there.
“My players are also positive because they want to give autographs and pictures, but they cannot do that for hours after a game when they have other things to do.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel