Philippe Clement wants Rangers kids to make club millions as youth the route out of 'difficult financial situation'
Fizzing Philippe Clement has warned his Rangers players: Stop making me angry.
The raging Ibrox boss was forced to turn on the half-time hairdryer as his team headed down the tunnel trailing Dundee 2-1. His furious rant got the reaction he was looking for as Gers came back out and rattled off four goals to clinch the win needed to delay Celtic’s Premiership title party for 24 hours at least. But with the Rangers set to face their bitter rivals again a week on Saturday in the Scottish Cup Final, Clement is concerned by his team’s lax approach off the ball.
Now he’s warned the Light Blues to up their effort levels and spare themselves another ear bashing. The Belgian boss - whose side round off their league campaign against Hearts win Saturday before turning attentions to Hampden - said: “With the ball we started with good intentions from the start. There were a lot of positive things but not without the ball in the first half.
"At the end of the first half, we came out behind although we were better on the ball. That’s of no use if you aren’t good enough without the ball. So I was really angry about that at half-time because football – and they know – is about both sides. In the second half, you saw what they can do if they’re focussed on both things.
“But I cannot make myself angry every half time or before every game. That’s impossible. It needs to come out of the team. They need to understand that and take confidence. This is the perfect example today. Booed off the pitch at half-time. And a lot of applause after the game because people how they saw the team playing, how the scored and how aggressive they were in the duels and how they didn’t concede in the second half.
“This is the perfect example. I am going to put a lot of attention to that again to get it out of these last two games. But it needs to come out of the players.”
Gers fell behind after losing two goals in as many minutes to Jordan McGhee and Mexican ace Antonio Portales. Ross McCausland pulled one back on the stroke of half-time before Gers upped their game after the break, with Cyriel Dessers’s header, a Todd Cantwell fluke and substitute Scott Wright’s late double providing some cheer for the Ibrox faithful after Saturday’s Old Firm heartbreaker.
But Clement admits only his players can explain why they put in another sub-standard show in the opening 45. He said: "That’s a difficult one because it’s a personal one. It’s not also about 11 players in the first half. The players, and I told them also, if you want to play for a team like Rangers, that’s the basics. That needs to be there every time.
“If you want to play for a team who ends in the (bottom) half of the league, yes you can have one moment yes and one moment no. Here it’s all the time, switched on, aggressive in everything you do, with and without the ball.
“We need to build a squad like that where everybody has this internal fire to do it every day and in every game. They need to take these lessons in a better way and a more consistent way.”
Cantwell was the driving force as Rangers mounted their comeback and Clement said: “I was very happy with his second half, yeah. That is the Todd I want to see every time.
“Then he makes the difference, then he makes stats, then he is important for this club. It needs to be this fire, desire every time, with and without the ball not only one thing.”
Clement turned to his youth team as he handed a debut to youngster Robbie Fraser and just a third run out for teenager Cole McKinnon. And said: “They have been training a lot with us to get the principles, to understand the demand in the first team.
“We are busy with this programme to get integration into the first team as much as possible in our training. We are going to continue with that. This club comes out of a financial difficult situation. The club needs for the future to get also money in by producing or making players better, getting young players in and to make them better to sell them.”