The awful Rangers stat set by Graeme Murty matched by Clement as boss served derby home truth

Rangers manager Philippe Clement knew what was at stake. Winless in his first four Old Firm derbies heading to Celtic Park on Sunday, the Belgian was desperate to avoid one particularly unwanted stat.

However, a comprehensive 3-0 defeat to Brendan Rodgers’ Hoops in the east end of the city left Clement licking his wounds as he became the the latest Light Blues boss to have failed to win any of their first five fixtures against the Parkhead club since Rangers’ FIRST-EVER manager William Wilton.

Sky Sports commentator Ian Crocker confirmed live on-air: “Philippe Clement will join Graeme Murty in failing to win his first five Old Firm games. Rangers very first manager William Wilton didn’t win his first eight, but that’s going back a bit. It’s on to the new year version of this contest next.”

Despite seeing his struggling side outclassed again by the reigning champions on their own patch, Clement bizarrely referenced the apparent age difference between both starting XI’s in his post-match debrief on Sky Sports. He stated: “We know we are at the start of something. 16 players left the club, we have a lot of new guys and young guys.

“Look at the age difference between the starting eleven of Celtic today and ours. So we know we have a lot of things to work on but we see also the potential that is there. You saw it in that 10 minutes at the beginning and more in the second half. We need to keep working on that in the next weeks and months to be better in January and to take the win then.”

But furious pundit Kris Boyd wasn’t buying into Clement’s comments, insisting he needs to stop making excuses. The former Ibrox hitman declared: “The thing that jumps out to me there is the average age. Celtic’s average age today was 27, Rangers was 26. It’s nothing to do with age. I’m fed up with excuses. Philippe Clement arrived here and it was a breath of fresh air. Positive thinking, fresh leader, but recently - I don’t like it.

“I don’t like the excuses. It’s easy to say we’ve not improved. The chances that were created - they were offside. It’s easy to say if they’d scored, but football doesn’t work like that. You had a good 10 minutes, there’s another 80 minutes. They worrying thing for me is Rangers absolutely capitulated once Celtic scored that goal that was offside. It’s quite clear what’s happened at Rangers in terms of the players that have come in “They’ve arrived, the transfer fees will be spent over a period of time and the wages will be nowhere near the level that Barisic, Goldson, Lundstram, Cantwell, Jack, Sima, Davies were on. They’ve trimmed the wage bill but they aren’t any better than what’s left.”