Positive Philippe Clement takes aim at misfiring Rangers striker Cyriel Dessers - 'you always have surprises'

Rangers new manager Philippe Clement believes his past ability to produce “surprises” with players could help him transform Cyriel Dessers’ Ibrox career.

The on-field struggles of the striker purchased from Cremonese in a £4million deal have come to symbolise the club’s flawed summer player recruitment central to Michael Beale losing his job a fortnight ago, and Clement’s appointment at the weekend. But the Belgian 49-year-old points to Dessers having “succeeded before” as demonstrating the “potential” exists for the forward to do so again. The frontman was top scorer in the 2021-22 Europa Conference League in netting 10 times at Feyenoord after claiming the same accolade in the covid-abandoned Dutch top flight two years earlier with 15 goals for Heracles. He also netted 29 goals for second tier NAC Breda in 2016-17.

Clement recalled how his impact on the status of Ally Samatta on his arrival at Genk five years ago as evidence he restore the confidence of misfiring strikers. “I will give him [Dessers] all the tools for that and then it’s about him doing it,” he said. “That’s the same for every player. We will give them the tools to get the best out of them. Then it’s for the player to take it. I have seen this process before. That’s why I say we need to give all possibilities for the players to step up.

“You always have surprises. I had it in Genk. I had two strikers there. Nikolaos Karelis, who was scoring all the time, and then Ally Samatta, who didn’t play because he never scored goals. Everyone said ‘this guy never scores a goal’. But we worked really hard with Ally, like with all the other players, and he took it. He became better and after a few weeks I put Ally in the team more and more and he started to score goals. The next season he was top scorer in Belgium and the season after that he made a good transfer to Aston Villa. So we will invest in all the players to get the best out of them.”