Rangers are trapped in rinse and repeat but one more botch will leave Patrick Stewart no way to clean his reputation

Rinse and repeat and on they go. Another campaign crumbling, another manager hung out to dry with Rangers trapped in a mess of their own making.

It’s coming up on seven months since former chairman John Bennett vowed to put an end to the relentless cycle of hiring and firing at Ibrox. Well he’s now long gone … with Philippe Clement ushered out the door too. The big Belgian undoubtedly contributed to his own downfall. The Ibrox fan base had long grown weary listening to the 50-year-old former Brugge and Monaco boss and his flimsy, bizarre excuses cobbled together while attempting to defend one costly defeat to Celtic after another.

When those cack-handed comments were combined with the dwindling performance levels of an increasingly tedious, one-paced outfit, well then there really was no way back for him in the minds of a seething support base. But then what chance did Clement ever really stand of rebuilding Rangers when those above him had done so much to damage the foundations he was trying to put in place?

Clement wasn’t the man who dished out thousands of pounds a week to high-earning flops like Rabbi Matondo, Ben Davies, Sam Lammers and Todd Cantwell. It was him who forgot to order the steel shipment from China before the builders moved in to renovate the Copland Road stand.

And he wasn’t sitting at the negotiating table when Gers signed off on five deals over the summer that raked in a measly £800,000 in net transfer revenue as the club were effectively forced to pay off the likes of Cantwell and Connor Goldson in a desperate bid to get them to leave. But Clement was certainly the one left counting the cost of those expensive mistakes.

Patrick Stewart wasn’t the man responsible either. But the new CEO might find