Ahead of facing Queens Park in the Scottish Cup, Phil Clement has sent out another distress signal about the finances at Ibrox.

First up with the daily newspapers and broadcasters on Friday the Belgian Beale was revealing that his club couldn’t afford to bring in Lyall Cameron from Dundee despite being obliged to pay a compensation fee in the summer.

Three transfer windows ago money was being thrown around at Ibrox as if there was no tomorrow with Danilo, Sam Lammers and Cyriel Dessers costing £15m with the same amount committed on long term contracts.

Dessers and Danilo are still draining the wage bill and will be for a few more years to come while new CEO Paddy Stewart attempts to get costs down to matching turnover.

Clement is left to try and put a brave face on managing the club finances, a few times a week he has to dress up Austerity as a transformation with bang average talents like Jefte, Connor Barron and Hamza Igamane being pushed as transfer targets for Chelsea, Everton and Spurs.

This time a year ago Clement was on the brink of landing an unprecedented quadruple, like his squad the pressure of expectation became too much to cope with.

Defeats to Motherwell and Ross County either side of a Moral Victory over Celtic saw him race to the away dressing room in tears after an April defeat to Don Cowie’s side in Dingwall.

There were two real defeats to come from Celtic before the season ended that exposed the myth of Clement, just months after the drooling media coverage that acclaimed him as A Proper Football Manager.

That title may apply in comparison to Micky Beale but up against Brendan Rodgers and Oleksandr Shovkovskyi (Dynamo Kiev) the current Ibrox boss has been shown up as just another bang average boss with a neat line in excuses passed on by obliging media messengers.

Reliving last season’s losses Clement took out the violin to claim that the foundations of his house had been taken away.

If he is on the look out for sympathy he could look across the city to a manager that has lost Joe Hart, Carl Starfelt, Aaron Mooy, Matt O’Riley and Kyogo Furuhashi. Brendan Rodgers also had to do without Jota for 18 months.

Nine of the Eleven players that started last season’s Scottish Cup Final are still on the payroll, only Todd Cantwell and Fabio Silva have moved on, but that doesn’t deter Clement from rewriting the FACTS! To cover up his failings.

But a lot of the guys in the circle were away just a few weeks later. It’s difficult to use that as fuel when you’re working with a new group of players. And that’s what we need at this club, more consistency in the squad, so we can build something. You can’t start from new every time.

I’ll make a comparison with a house. You start with foundations, like we had to do this season. But it’s not a good way to build a house if you do two storeys then wipe it and start from the foundation again.

That’s really important. We need to create something now with players who experience these things together. You need these connections, the timings, the communication – verbal and non-verbal – to understand each other.

Each individual player has to know what their job is and collectively we have to move forward together now. Of course, you need a core and stability. And you need consistency to build every season.

Some clubs have done that really well and they get the benefits. It’s a major part of football.

At every club where I was successful in the past, it was always when we had two or three years together as a group. Not with all 11 in the first-team but at least with seven or eight. That’s such a critical part that can’t be under- estimated

Clement’s biggest surprise has still to come, in the summer the Season Ticket Money will be allocated to 12 months of running costs with transfer spending restricted to whatever comes in from selling serial losers.

Unless any directors want to throw more good money after bad there will be no summer spending beyond the £4.5m committed to signing Oscar Cortes.

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Pundits and commentators- Dundee United expose Willie Collum’s VAR circus

Dundee United have blown a huge hole in the the credibility on Willie Collum’s VAR project.

Since taking over from Crawford Allan as the Head of Refereeing at the SFA the former school-teacher has been self promoting through the monthly VAR Review with media buddy Gordon Duncan, topped up by the weekly KMI report.

Collum has been getting praised throughout the media as a ‘good guy’ bringing accountability to the secretive world of refereeing but clubs and fans have been less than impressed.

As usual in Scottish football the truth lies not far below the surface.

Not much detail is known about the Key Match Incident Panel which reports on Fridays over highly selective incidents from the previous weekend.

Following on from the Dundee United statement more detail has emerged with the revelation that pundits and commentators are being used in the KMI to whitewash the mistakes of match officials.

Opening up the possibility that Collum through the SFA is paying Kris Boyd to put an official stamp on decisions being made in matches involving Celtic.

Following the statement from Dundee United the Daily Record threw more light on the issue through the well connected Scott Burns who revealed:

The controversial KMI panel is asking commentators, reporters and pundits to make calls on some of the biggest decisions in Scottish football.

Dundee United controversially released a statement last night calling for VAR reform and confirming it had withdrawn its representation from the Key Match Incident Review Panel. It comes days after disgruntled chiefs at rivals St Mirren called for VAR to be taken out of the hands of the Scottish Football Association and to be run by an independent body.

The SFA put together a regular five man KMI panel to review controversial refereeing and VAR incidents. That consists of club representatives, former officials, ex-players and managers along with media figures. Record Sport understands that BBC commentators and Sky Sports pundits are amongst those who have been asked for their views, along with some of the written press, who all contribute towards the KMI’s findings.

As broadcast partners of the SFA it seems that BBC Scotland and Sky Sports pundits get a payment for sitting on the panel judging on refereeing issues. Faddy and Boydy struggle to string two thoughts together, their knowledge of the Laws of the Game is certainly questionable.

While money is wasted on the KMI panel a substandard version of VAR is used on every SPFL Premiership fixture.

During the second half of Celtic’s win at Motherwell an own goal from Tom Sparrow was disallowed after John Beaton applied VAR lines to the incident.

With thick hand-drawn lines applied at a distant angle there was no evidence that Adam Idah was offside as he ran through on goal.

Afterwards BBC and Sky barely touched on the incident, in stark contrast to the red card shown to Mohamed Diomande the previous week which was given blanket coverage. Collum raced a statement out on that incident straight after the final whistle, nothing has been heard on the squiggly lines used against Idah.

Dundee United provided their supporters with a detailed statement explaining why they were no longer giving credibility to the KMI smokescreen.

Dundee United FC has today formally notified the Scottish FA of our decision to withdraw our representation from the KMI panel.

This decision follows extensive discussions throughout the season with the Scottish FA Refereeing Department, where we raised concerns regarding the panel’s purpose, effectiveness, and impact on Scottish football. We believe the panel’s outcomes have been inconsistent with feedback provided by the Scottish FA.

There have been instances where on-field decisions, supported by VAR and endorsed by the Scottish FA Refereeing Department, were contradicted by the KMI panel. In many cases, these disagreements appear to be based on the opinions of panel members who, for the most part, lack significant expertise in the laws of the game.

There it is- the SFA use people without significant expertise in the Laws of the Game to justify the decisions taken by referees and backed up by VAR.

Celtic’s only comment since the introduction of VAR was ‘penalty to Rangers’ when Michael Nicholson was questioned about Beaton at the 2023 AGM.