On his first public appearance as interim chairman of Rangers back in September, John Gilligan expressed a desire to prevent Philippe Clement from being forever pushed out front as spokesperson for the club and pick up some of the slack himself.
Well, it's time for him to live up to his word. Clement has become totally unlistenable. Completely implausible. His assertion that being turned over by Aberdeen midweek was one of his side's best performances of the season – and then appearing to roll back on that a couple of days later – was the final straw after months and months and mountains of mumbo-jumbo.
It is embarrassing now to concede that, in his early days in the manager's role, Clement appeared to many of us as the calm voice of sanity Rangers needed.
Listening slack-jawed to the stuff he comes out with these days, it's hard not to wonder if that water bottle he sips on the touchline has had a bit of old Henry Jekyll's special serum in it.
Clement has either gone down the road, like many at Ibrox, of deliberately gaslighting the punters or he simply doesn't have a grasp on what the old place is about.
Either way, he's lost the plot. Like so many of his predecessors, it's got to him and it's clear he requires more than just a spell out of the spotlight in a dark room with a cold compress.
He needs relieved of his duties. And if that's not going to happen – which appears to be the case – Gilligan, or someone, is going to have to come out and explain why.
They're going to have to offer a strong, laid-out case to explain why they are sticking with this bloke against all available evidence. Or, if it is because they are just too skint to pay him and his backroom staff off, that's going to have to be put out there.
Supporters have seen through Clement and so many of those above him in the pecking order. Whether they become more vocal in their protests or simply stop going to games remains to be seen, but the dam is about to break.
That Rangers are now turning over close on £90million a year and remain capable of recording losses of £17.2m, as confirmed by the financial results released midweek, is unconscionable. The whole business – with no permanent chair, no CEO, no head of academy, no director of football – is a basketcase.
Yet, the accounts also show that it is still running an overall wage bill of £61m. And that's why Clement can't escape no matter the mess that surrounds him. He's been backed in the market and is delivering nothing.
Mohamed Diomande, who looks less effective as time goes on, cost more than £4m. Another £4m has been committed to buying Oscar Cortes, who is rarely fit. The guts of £4m went on bringing in Nedim Bajrami, who has looked OK in flashes and would surely be better if used in his proper position.
The loan fee to Wolfsburg for bringing in Vaclav Cerny will not be inconsiderable. Robin Propper, dropped for Rangers' biggest game of the season at Pittodrie and struggling badly, cost £1.5m. The list goes on.
Money has been spent on this team. And it is currently nine points behind Aberdeen in the table. It has scored two goals in five away games in the league.
No one with their head screwed on could have fancied Rangers to pip Celtic to the title, but they should still be blowing everyone else in the league away. As it is, they are in a battle to finish third with the manager jabbering on incessantly about new players and cutting wage bills and long-term projects. These are the words and reaction of someone who just doesn't get it.
The fact he said the team would be a different proposition by October seems to have fallen by the wayside, but, in truth, it is hard to treat anything he says seriously any longer.
Rangers cannot be where they are given their budget. Being turned over at Kilmarnock and Aberdeen. Being ragdolled at Parkhead and having the manager come out afterwards to claim it would have been different had his team taken two early offside chances - before arguing with fans outside Ibrox later in the day about the number of shots at goal.
It's just ludicrous. Just hammering home all the doubts that surfaced about Clement as his team blew the title last season by losing to Motherwell and Ross County and drawing at Dundee. As he claimed scraping a 3-3 draw at home to Celtic made his men 'moral winners' and that Motherwell should have lost 5-1 at Ibrox – when, somewhat inconveniently, they scored twice in a 2-1 win.
The football, going by the spectators who go there every week, has been dire. So many conversations centre around an inability to see what Clement is trying to do, what the team's ID is.
Before Rangers' three-goal towsing in the first Old Firm game of the season, a trip to the training centre offered the opportunity to ask Cerny what kind of style of play the former Club Brugge boss was trying to implement.
'Our style? Obviously, in most of the games, you have the ball a lot,' he replied. 'We want to be creative, we want to make it tough for the opponents to read us as a team, have a lot of variations, try to play nice football and be aggressive without the ball, dictate the tempo of the game.'
It felt a bit vague at the time. Yet, even on the thin detail offered in that answer, it is hard to see much of that in Rangers' play.
It is astonishing that Clement continues with Cyriel Dessers up front. He's had two windows to fix this and went for Fabio Silva and Hamza Igamane. It was clear James Tavernier's time was up in the summer, but he remains as captain.
Becoming the latest member of the executive asked to dress up sludge as sugar, Chief Financial Officer James Taylor was wheeled out the other day to try to make the accounts look less of a disaster zone than they really are. Sure as eggs is eggs, he ended up going on about the 'player-trading model'.
Honestly. Talk about a place going round in ever-decreasing circles. Rangers have no major assets in their squad. They missed the boat with Jack Butland, who could have brought in cash in the summer were it not for Clement insisting he must not leave at any cost.
Can anyone possibly trust the manager and his recruitment chief Nils Koppen to turn this round? And for those who insist you can't keep sacking managers and have to give the current incumbent time, look where that landed Manchester United with Erik Ten Hag when it was as clear as a bell he needed punted last season.
It's not as if there aren't credible alternatives around. Kilmarnock's Derek McInnes would get the team organised. Kevin Muscat has just won the Chinese Super League with Shanghai Port – adding that crown to the A-League and J-League championships – and was a contender before Clement was appointed.
Of course, all this remains irrelevant should the board remain four-square behind the existing manager. If that's the case, though, people are going to have to be convinced and told the reasons why in detail by one of the decision-makers.
Certainly, listening to Clement drone on and on about why he's the man for the job has become even less bearable than watching his team. And that's saying something.
Chief executive Andrew McKinlay would do well to remember who pays his wages at Hearts
Fair play to Hearts CEO Andrew McKinlay for apologising to Hearts supporters for saying they should regard it as 'a privilege' that there are two places for fan representatives on the board.
Tynecastle punters, of course, have ploughed almost £18million into their club over the years through the Foundation of Hearts. It has been a remarkable triumph of organisation and commitment and serves as a lesson to – and a blueprint for – fans of so many other clubs around the country.
That's why McKinlay caused consternation with his comments during an interview on Neil Critchley's appointment as manager, which he has described as 'stressful'.
'I was asked about fan sentiment, and I was very clumsy in my response in my use of one word, which was 'privileged',' he said.
'I did intend to use that word, but what I was trying to say was that the club are incredibly privileged in that we have FOH and that we have two representatives of FOH who sit on the board. It's not a privilege for the fans to have that. It's an entitlement, and rightly so.'
We'll let you off this time, Andrew, but don't do it again. If there's one club in the country where the supporter base should be given their place, it's the old Jam Tarts.
Rovers' rookie manager plan was ridiculous
Good to see the absolute nonsense of a TV show putting a Hibs fan in the Albion Rovers dugout as manager for a Lowland League game against Hearts' B-team was knocked on the head before kick-off yesterday.
Who on earth at the Coatbridge club thought this was acceptable? It's all very well having a laugh about Scotland's lower-leagues and their idiosyncracies, but this was a step too far into just treating the whole thing like a joke.
Sure, it was a fun idea from the guys who put together BBC Scotland's 'A View From The Terrace'. It would have delivered good content. You can see why they chanced their arm by asking, but it should never have gone any further.
Rovers are a 142-year-old club with a mixed, yet proud, history. People still pay good money to go and watch them. What must it feel like to see those currently at the top of the club allow it to be demeaned in this way?
Where is the level of self-respect? Or, for that matter, respect for the fans, however few they may be, who still back and support the team?
The Scottish game is good for celebrating its oddities and its unvarnished rawness, but there is a difference between that and making a fool of itself.
That's what Albion Rovers sought to do. Make a mockery not only of themselves, but the sport as a whole. Thank heavens someone saw sense - or, more likely, took fright – in time.