Rangers reaction: Why Philippe Clement was satisfied with Hearts draw as one debutant gets special praise
Ibrox boss believes team could not have done much more in preparation for opener
Philippe Clement declared himself satisfied with a point from Rangers’ league opener against Hearts at Tynecastle as he waits for his team to gel.
However, the Rangers manager acknowledged that his side need to improve on their performance level in the 0-0 draw, with another major challenge coming as soon as Tuesday night against Dynamo Kyev in a Champions League third qualifying round first leg clash.
“I think it was a fair result today,” he said. “The first half was for Hearts, the second half was for us.”
Rangers were disrupted when Oscar Cortes was forced off shortly after half-time to be replaced by Rabbi Matondo. The visitors came closest to scoring when a Cyriel Dessers header hit both the crossbar and post.
“I am never happy, I always want more,” said Clement. “I want better. I want to improve things. I would have loved to win today. We were really close but we could have lost this game also.
“I don’t think we could have done much more work in the last couple of weeks in training to be much better than we were today but we still have a way to go. We will improve in the next couple of weeks and the next couple of months.
“Small things like Danilo - if you have a fit Danilo then you can put him on in the last 15 minutes to come in fresh but he is not there yet.
"You cannot make those changes for the moment, so there are a lot of individual things we can make better, and also collectively as you saw in the first half. With and without the ball it was not good enough. But if we do the right things as we did in the second half we play much better.”
Clement stressed that it was too early to say whether new signings Vaclav Cerny, who came on in the second half, and defender Robin Propper, who was at Tynecastle but not included in the squad, might be in the right condition to start on Tuesday night in Poland.
“I need to see how players come out of this game, how do they recover before Tuesday in such a short time,” he said. “That is why Kyiv also do not play this weekend, for example. We need to see to make the right decisions for that game and then the game that comes after and the week after. It will be every three days looking at the form of the players physically and also mentally, but for sure physically. Are they ready to play every time?
“I don’t think we have many players now who can play nine games in four weeks but that’s a problem with all the teams that play early in Europe. It is the same everywhere. We need to make smart rotations.”
The Belgian praised on-loan Czech Republic winger Cerny for what he produced in his cameo. “He made a direct impact on the game but he comes out of four weeks of holiday after the Euros,” he said. “He has trained just three times with us. He is not in top shape. For sure we are going to become better. Robin was also with the squad today but if you don’t train with the team you cannot play a game.
“So that is also some experienced waiting to be put in the squad. I am sure in the next couple of weeks we are going to improve and in that way it was positive that they reacted in the right way I the second half, doing the things that we needed to do and you saw that we played much better football again.”
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