Philippe Clement tells Rangers to never stop, singles out one player for special praise and has say on cutting gap to Celtic
Trailing to an early opener from Hearts striker Lawrence Shankland, Rangers struggled to break down their visitors from the capital, with captain James Tavernier also missing a penalty on the stroke of half time. With the home fans becoming increasingly disgruntled, Rangers were awarded a second penalty on 89 minutes – this time, Tavernier made no mistake – and then netted a winner three minutes into stoppage time when Danilo headed home to send Ibrox wild.
The victory cuts the gap at the top of the cinch Premiership to five points following Celtic’s 0-0 draw at Hibs on Saturday and Clement said he learned plenty about his players’ mentality from this victory.
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Hide Ad"The emotions are that I am really happy because I spoke for the last two days with the team that I am still in an observation period,” said Clement. “I know their football qualities, how they are as individuals and a group. I am curious if there comes a moment, and it always comes, where the scenario is not going our way how they would react.
"Clearly they had the reaction that I wanted. I spoke about that with them. Our strength needs to be that whatever happens in football, we never give up and we keep on repeating what we are doing because they are doing already good things together. Of course we need to still make better a lot of details but if we show the right mentality over and over again in every action and in the reaction afterwards then we are a really good team. That is what we showed together, not with 11 but with the whole squad, also the players who came in to give this energy.
"Was it perfect? No. But for me it is a reference game in the way that they have seen if they never give up a lot of good things can happen. It is not a guarantee that you win every game because not even the best teams in the world manage to do that but we are going to win much more games than we have done until now."
Clement reserved special praise for his captain Tavernier, who recovered from his early penalty miss to score from the spot later on and then assist Danilo for the winner. “It is a big step forward for me and in that way Tav was an example today,” continued the Belgian. “Missing the penalty, getting the stick because of that, that moment you can lose confidence, you can go down, you can stop taking responsibility. But he took the second penalty, he scored it and afterwards he gave the assist for the second goal. I want to see a lot of players with that mentality in my dressing room. I want to see everybody with that mentality in my dressing room because then we are going to make an amazing season.”
Asked if his message is starting to get through to the players, Clement responded: “That you need to ask them. I have seen what I wanted to see today, a team that never stopped. Also when we made changes the players came in stepped into the game directly and with confidence to believe in themselves. It is a shit scenario today. The first attack you get against you get a goal. Afterwards you are dominating, you are getting balls on the touchline and not in, you miss a penalty, you have a lot of shots, I think 28 today. We were really dominant, I think 78 per cent ball possession. Everything is there but it is still not there. I told them at half time that we keep on going because we are a team that can score two goals in five minutes. OK, it was not five minutes! But that needs to be our strength for the rest of the season, that we keep our tempo high and in that way we will win a lot of games.
Clement batted away the importance of cutting the gap with Celtic. “Is it five points?” he replied. “It is good that you told me. I will say the same things I said a few days ago and I will repeat it for the next couple of months so that you guys know already, or you can talk to your Belgian colleagues about it because they know it for a long time. I want my team to be focused on thing and that is the next game. Nothing else. Nothing else. We need to focus on ourselves to make sure, as much as possible, we take the three points all season long in all the competitions. That is the only thing that is important. Then, at the end of the road, you can start to calculate. It is much too early.”