Kris Boyd thought Rangers and Philippe Clement were “making excuses” ahead of taking on Celtic today.
The Gers hero has been outspoken on his thoughts about the manager and his use of sports science to dictate his team selections.
Boyd warned Clement he could be sacked after the Belgian claimed he would be ‘stupid’ to ignore the advice.
Vaclav Cerny and Hamza Igamane had been benched vs Motherwell on the guidance of the science and had to be called upon at half-time to rescue a point.
It was yesterday revealed James Tavernier and Jack Butland would be unavailable for today’s derby clash.
And Clement challenged the rest of the Rangers squad to prove they can cope without their leaders.
Pre-match, Boyd slaughtered the sports science use again and also reckoned the manager was making excuses BEFORE facing Celtic.
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Boyd critical of Rangers and Clement again
He told Sky Sports: “Your best players play every week, that’s just what happens, they play the most minutes. And if you’re going to fall into that category, that’s what happens.
“If sports science was that good in advance, the three that have played the most minutes this season – James Tavernier, Jack Butland and John Souttar – aint playing today, so why were they not able to find out they were going to be injured?
“I think it’s a lot of excuses, the build-up to this game there has been a lot of excuses put out their early doors.
“As a manager, why would you want to say your full-back is out before anyone has a clue? Philippe Clement wasn’t even asked the question the other day and he said ‘James Tavernier is out’.
“The Jack Butland thing needs addressed as well. It took Jack Butland to go to social media to clarify what was actually wrong with him because that was leaked.
“Brendan Rodgers talked about having a mole in the club and he will address that. Philippe Clement is more or less telling everybody his team. It can’t help.
“The sports science, listen it’s there and I think it’s a good thing that players have got someone monitoring them. But it creates a softness.
“When players are being told they’re tired all off a sudden the mindset is ‘I’m tired.’
“The new one is the wellness sheet. The scores in that reflect how you’ve done in the game. Rangers come off the back of losing against St Mirren, do you think the scores will be the same if Rangers go an win today?
“No, they’ll be absolutely nowhere near it because you’re asked to give a score on sleep, what you’ve eaten, your mood.
“Sports science is not exact science, you’ve got to have communication with your players and how they’re feeling.
“For me there is a lot of excuses. Philippe Clement has been very good at using excuses after a game, I just feel they’re being used before this one and it can’t be good.”
Boyd made to eat words
As it turned out, they didn’t need any excuses as Rangers ran out 3-0 winners over Celtic with a dominant display.
The idea of having a loss to make excuses for clearly wasn’t on the minds of the players or the manager as much as it was on Boyd’s.
It was makeshift at the back but the players just got on with it with Ridvan Yilmaz putting on a good showing out of position at right-back.
Clearly, 11 points behind is too much but on the evidence of today along there are so many positives to take.
