Barry Ferguson has warned Phil Clement that he has until Christmas time to get things right at Ibrox.
Celtic visit Ibrox on January 2, at best there is a 50-50 chance of the Belgian Beale still being in charge for that match.
Clement has developed the useful knack of scraping through the fixtures that his side are expected to win while they have been turned over in the meaningful matches against Dinamo Kiev, Celtic and Lyon.
This weekend will mark a year in the job for the former Monaco boss with Ibrox fans struggling to see any areas of progress or style of play beyond sending Cyriel Dessers chasing after long clearances.
After delivering media conferences as dull as dishwater Clement has come out with some amazing comments since he celebrated a moral victory over Celtic at the start of April.
A dependency on dubious stats to deflect from every set-back has alarmed Ibrox fans, even though he has the salary and trimmings of being a Club Ambassador Ferguson thinks like any bear and knows that deep down Clement is simply stalling with very little prospect of delivering success.
That makes for a difficult balancing act, listening to the former Alloa boss on Go Radio the Daily Record reports Ferguson saying:
In terms of last night, I was at the game and I am sure you listened to Philippe Clement after it.
It wasn’t a brilliant performance. I think with the amount of signings he has made – we are in the first week of October – I think you need to give it to Christmas time.
You do need to allow players to settle in, I totally get you don’t get time in the West of Scotland. Could they be better? Yeah, 100 per cent. The manager has admitted that but we will just need to wait and see what the coming months bring.
The positive that I look at from last night is another clean sheet domestically. It could have been a lot better. Good to see [Iansi] Hagi come on as well but obviously got sent off which is not ideal.
Overall, I am not going to sit here and say everything is rosy in the garden but Rangers could be a lot better.
There is an awful lot of football to be played before Christmas, this month there are away matches at Kilmarnock and Aberdeen to get by with Steaua Bucharest and St Mirren visiting Ibrox.
Europe looks like being especially testing with Clement facing domestic Sunday clashes on the back of facing Nice and Manchester United away while Spurs visit Ibrox with the bears getting whipped into a frenzy by the return of serial winner Ange Postecoglou.
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