Rangers fans react to major James Tavernier incident | OneFootball

We’ve had a bit of a response to our piece on James Tavernier’s humiliation at the hands of Philippe Clement for Rangers last night, with a lot of fans on the offensive by suggesting that it was Tavernier who humiliated Rangers, and that his removal was a long time coming.

We agree completely.

A lot of supporters clearly didn’t properly read (or understand) the piece perhaps – at no point did we object to Clement taking Tavernier off, indeed Ibrox Noise would not even remotely have started the boy in the first place.

We agree he’s subpar these days, we agree that he should not be starting or even be at Rangers, and there’s been too much speculation about him in the past few years.

BUT: you knew there was a but:

Tavernier has been completely and utterly (wrongly) untouchable at Rangers, especially under Philippe Clement, so to be subbed off for the first time by him on a football basis and not late on in a match for rotation purposes is, factually, for him, humiliating.

That he deserved to be subbed off is neither here nor there, the fact is Clement, like many managers before him, put Tavernier in a ridiculous exalted position high on a pedestal where he can’t be subbed or dropped, and that in itself made Tav untouchable.

Wrongly, yes, but factually true.

And that means that subbing him off for any reason that isn’t injury or late rotation is humiliating for him.

It is not correct that this is the way, it’s not ‘right’ that subbing him off humiliated him, but it did.

And that’s the ridiculous problem with having a captain that has been completely invulnerable till now.

Will it change?

We couldn’t guess, but we’d suggest he’ll still be in the lineup come the weekend.