Rangers boss Philippe Clement opens up on societal challenges and recounts fan forum incident

Rangers manager Philippe Clement accepts the challenging environment that footballers face in blanking out criticism and noise as he tries to protect his players from external influences.

The Ibrox manager, who takes his team to Pittodrie on Wednesday night for a vital match against Aberdeen, has witnessed first-hand the damage social media can do to one of his squad members, with Czech loanee Vaclav Cerny forced to delete his Instagram account after online abuse in the wake of some poor performances.

The Wolfsburg loanee has scored five goals in his past four matches - “Two, three weeks ago he was for some people a really bad player,” remarked Clement - and the Belgian believes societal change has brought challenges for the modern-day player that did not exist previously.

Vaclav Cerny is one of Philippe Clement's Rangers players who has suffered with online criticism. | SNS Group

"It's a new world, but is it harder?” Clement said in his pre-match press conference ahead of facing Aberdeen. “It's not only football, because we cannot exaggerate that. It's society. It's with children also. When you were a young child in my time, you could have been bullied. I never had it, luckily. I was one of the taller ones. You could have been bullied during school hours, and you came home in a safe environment. And now children can be bullied all the time because it's by the phone. And they have their phone all the time in their hands. So, it's society that changes them that way.

"And it's the same for you guys. Before, you had the newspapers, and you had the next day, the deadline. And now it's every second that you need to bring something, because otherwise somebody else is bringing it. So, the world has changed in that way, and we all need to adapt in that way. For players, it's different now than 20 years ago. Is it more difficult or more harder? I don't know. It's just society changing. Football has changed, and you need to adapt. So, I cannot say if it's harder or not. There are other difficulties."

Clement used a story from a time at Club Brugge to recount issues he had with online comments when a fan forum was created by Club Brugge supporters.

“I think I was already 30 or something. It was the first time the fan forum at my club where I was captain. And I was there for a long time,” recounted Clement. “So, it was something new. It's something exciting because you could read afterwards what people, fans, were thinking about you. So, everybody looked at us, and then you start to see, okay, this profile is really somebody who knows about football because he thinks I'm a really good player. And the other one, always critical for me, so he doesn't know too much about football.

Clement takes his players to Aberdeen on Wednesday. | SNS Group

“That was the reaction by every player. Human [nature]. So, after six months or something that the forum was there, we had a fan day at the club. There were a lot of things to do around the club and we had training with the team. And I had to be the referee for a football game for all the people from the fan forum. They all came to play football.

“I was really interested in who were the guys who knew everything about football and who were the guys who knew less. But at the end, I saw that there was nobody really good at playing football. But they were good at recognising it or not recognising it, from my side. So, in the end, it's not only what you see on the pitch, it's also all the things around. Life, dressing room, training, all these things. You need all those things in the process.

“I understand that people that have never been in a dressing room or never been in 'what is the process to come to a team or to become a good player', that you try to explain that, but sometimes you cannot spread this message if you didn't live it."So, I understand that way. I learned from that moment also to accept it more, and not to put so much attention to it than I was in the beginning. That was a good lesson for me.”

Clement is trying to help his players, some of which have never been exposed to the pressure or demands of playing for Rangers before. “We're still working on making steps with the group,” added Clement. “And it's not only about that, about noise and all those things. It's also about playing every three days. Playing European football combined with domestic games and having this rhythm of games. Your body needs to adapt. Your mind needs to adapt. So, we're working on all these things with a lot of players where it's the first time that they are in this situation.

“You have others who are more used to doing that and they can help in that way also in the dressing room. Because it's crucial. This club is about winning every game. If you win, it's good or it's normal. And if you lose, everything is really bad. So, you need to live with that. And you need to have this ambition to be on top next time to win it. It's about that every time. All over. And if you create that consistency, then you get results.

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