Philippe Clement holds court on Rangers: Vaclav Cerny 'release', Ben Davies return chances, Patrick Stewart
Philippe Clement admits he is considering resting in-form winger Vaclav Cerny amid a heavy schedule of games.
Rangers are ending a traumatic year with a spring in their step. A new chief executive in Patrick Stewart is in place. New chairman Fraser Thornton has joined him on board. More excitingly for fans, four league wins in a row means the title is back in the Ibrox side's own hands - for the time being.
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Hide AdGiven the stakes, it’s unlikely that the Rangers manager will give Cerny the opportunity to sit out the trip to St Mirren on Boxing Day, particularly when the winger emerged as the match winner against Dundee on his last appearance. It was the player’s tenth goal of an increasingly productive season.


Cerny is also advised not to make any other plans on 2 January. Fitness permitting, he will be in the side to face Celtic, with Rangers hoping to continue making inroads into their rivals’ lead. Clement pondered what could turn out to be a season-defining run of five games before 5 January.
"It’s also been a busy period until now,” he noted, with the Ibrox side at least being able to park European commitments until towards the end of January. “Everybody’s speaking (about) now and that’s maybe because people think it’s the holidays now. But look at the period that we had in October, November, December. We will need to manage it.
"I’m happy that Ross McCausland is getting back,” he added. “He struggled for a long time with a problem his foot. He’s not 100 percent but he feels better now. And I hope he can grow now as well to release Cerny in moments. We have other options also with Danilo, Hamza (Igamane), (Cyriel) Dessers getting back. Nedim (Bajrami) can play in the three positions behind the striker. Ianis (Hagi) is also back, so there are more options than we had at the beginning of the season - and that will be crucial. Ridvan Yilmaz can also do a job as a left winger. It’s going to be crucial to be able to make rotations with all the games coming up.”
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Hide AdAt this hectic time Clement is glad to be spared thinking about club finances, with a new CEO now in the building. He has already had lengthy discussions with Stewart, who was in the directors' box against Dundee for the first time, although the manager is not yet ready to divulge the details. What, for example, is the likelihood of Ben Davies being recalled from Birmingham City given the current injury problems at centre-half? That has been mentioned as a possibility with John Souttar unavailable for the foreseeable future and 35-year-old Leon Balogun’s appearances requiring managed.


“I don’t want to speak about those things because we didn’t go into details on those things inside the club,” he said. Clement is relishing not having to do the CEO-chairman’s job as well as his own amid all these games.
“I had to speak a lot about that (the budget) during the last transfer window,” he said. “And yet it’s totally not my responsibility in the club. It’s my responsibility to work with the players who are there, to help with the club find players together and then to make right decisions about the budget.
"But about the budget, I don’t have any influence. Patrick (Stewart) is really happy to take that on his shoulders and speak with you guys in the next couple of weeks.”
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