The audacity of Clement shows he's either a good Rangers actor or something else after THAT claim – Hugh Keevins

Philippe Clement is, if his first media briefing since the embarrassment of a Scottish Cup defeat by Queen’s Park is any indication, a good actor.

Or else a bad judge of character. And with one sentence uttered during the Rangers manager’s press conference on Friday afternoon, he condemned himself to being thought of as the latter. Clement had the audacity, or the temerity, to state that last Sunday’s result did not reflect the game against Queen’s Park, the first lower-league side to win a Scottish Cup tie at Ibrox.

That is not only a failure to read the room. That’s a failure to find the room in the first place. The game actually reflected the manager, since he was increasingly confused the longer it went on and prone to making questionable decisions when the match was running away from him. But Clement’s line of thinking, a suggestion that a miscarriage of justice had actually taken place, only further alienates an already incandescent fan base.

Clement said he reached a stage where he wished he could go on to the pitch and put the ball in the net. The fans’ reaction will be to wish the manager hadn’t taken off Ianis Hagi, who might have done that job for him and prevented a watershed moment in Rangers’ history.

The Belgian has only heaped pressure on himself at Hearts today as he negotiates what he at least conceded as being the most difficult days of his coaching career. The sight of a man needing protective company in order to leave Ibrox last Sunday was distressing and a poor reflection on misguided fans – but it was an accurate barometer of supporter anger. Clement, by his words to the press, doesn’t appear to have grasped the extent of the opposition to him.

Friday’s media gathering was a missed chance