Philippe Clement may leave after big Rangers announcement | OneFootball

While the Belgian FA may have whittled a potential replacement for struggling national boss Dominico Tedesco down to five men with Philippe Clement at the front of the queue, unless an offer actually comes in for Rangers’ boss the ex-Genk manager remains in Govan. With that in mind, how does the change in Rangers’ boardroom announced this morning affect him?

Former Director of Football Recruitment Nils Koppen was obviously promoted to Technical Director in a move which has given Rangers supporters a massive headache, frustrated as we are at the lack of ambition.

But the big news and implication from this is the impact his promotion could have on Philippe Clement.

On the face of it, maybe not much – the two were working together as it was, but the main remit of their working relationship was indeed football recruitment; transfers, scouting, data-scouring you name it. Everything pertaining to the selection and signing of players, in effect.

But with this change, Koppen has taken on the keys to Ibrox, and now has full control over everything in the club on the football side of the business.

Just like predecessor Ross Wilson, Koppen is now the boss, he is in fact above Philippe Clement by quite a distance now, and is the upper executive for anything Clement wants to do.

So the impact?

Clement now needs Koppen’s say-so on anything, which ironically could be argued as the blind leading the blind, but that’s another debate for another day.

The point is Clement is now under the authority of a guy who gave him Fabio Silva and Mohamed Diomande, and while Clement himself is certainly responsible for selection and tactics, Koppen is his absolute boss as of this morning.

Now, this is not strictly anything new – as Ibrox Noise discussed many times, Clement is used to working under Technical Directors – it is in fact his preference to do so. It means Clement deals with the boots on the ground of working with the players, and not having to deal with the litigation of signing players, finding players, and negotiating with them.

But the issue he (might) have here is Koppen’s track record with Rangers so far is pretty woeful, the squad the-now Technical Director has furnished Clement with is rather poor at best, and now that man has the big red button?

Does Clement trust Koppen?

For all we criticise the manager’s tactics and selections, Koppen is hardly Mr Perfect either, and now he has free reign over the entire club’s football heritage and ambition?

This will have one of two effects – either it will speed up Clement’s desire to leave Rangers and maybe encourage him to take the Belgium job if he gets offered it, or it will reassure him that someone he trusts is now Technical Director.

We couldn’t guess which way it’ll go.