'Dangerous to answer in Glasgow': Philippe Clement tackles Rangers pace of change and one player's injury

Spending time in the company of Clement is always an illuminating experience. The 50-year-old celebrated his one-year anniversary at Ibrox on Tuesday. “I need to be home by six o’clock,” was his witty response when asked to reflect on his spell at the helm. He is right - a lot has happened under his watch.

Rangers won the League Cup and came close to landing the league title and the Scottish Cup last season. Clement has since undergone a dramatic revamp of the squad, there have been delays to construction work at Ibrox resulting in a flit to Hampden and he’s seen a chief executive and a chairman depart this calendar year alone.

He’s also experienced the infamous Rugby Park plastic pitch, which makes the lunchtime assignment in Ayrshire a dangerous one. Rangers require nothing less than three points if they are to keep pace with Celtic and Aberdeen above them in the league.

Clement has morphed into more than just a football manager at Rangers. The exits of CEO James Bisgrove and then chair John Bennett on the grounds of ill-health have put more responsibility on the former Monaco man’s shoulders. He has become a figurehead. “Yeah, I had to do more things than I did before in the club,” admits Clement. “But that's going to change fast now, I think in the next couple of weeks and for sure in the next couple of months.”

How fast? “Well, what is soon for you?” Clement retorts. “So, that's a dangerous thing to answer in Glasgow! Or in France, or in Belgium.”

Right now, John Gilligan is holding the Ibrox fort as chairman as the search continues for a new hierarchy. Clement and the 72-year-old don’t converse every day. “That's not possible,” the manager explains. “So he's busy with a lot of things, but regularly we speak with each other. Also with [directors] George Letham and Graham Park. We meet regularly and they keep me informed about how things are evolving in the club.”

Amid the evolution, Clement could easily point to this period being the most challenging of his career. Being the Rangers manager comes with all kinds of scrutiny. Clement brushes it off, citing previous challenges with Monaco, Genk and Club Brugge. “I don't know if you know the French media or the Belgian media, it's not a big difference,” he laughs. “Don't worry about that. But a lot of things happened in the club that I didn't expect one year ago. So, we look forward to making things better.”

One of the issues Clement persistently has to tackle is injuries. Since walking through the doors at Ibrox, the treatment room has been full. The club recruited new medical staff earlier this year to remedy the situation. For the Kilmarnock trip, striker Danilo could be in contention, with left-back Ridvan Yilmaz also making progress in his return. However, winger Oscar Cortes is still several weeks away with a knee issue.

Cortes joined Rangers on loan from Lens in January, only to suffer a posterior muscle injury at home to Killie in March that ended his season. On the opening day of this campaign, he tweaked his knee against Hearts, and after two games back last month picked up another injury in training. The situation with the 20-year-old Colombian is vexing some Rangers supporters, who fear they’ve committed to a permanent deal next summer for a crock.

Clement absolutely dispels such a notion. “Firstly I want to say that before he came to Rangers he didn't have one injury, in all his career, not in Lens, not in Colombia, nothing,” he states. “So it's not a player that the club wanted to bring in with a big injury record, because those are things we are looking much more into than it was in the past, because in the past there have been several transfers with players having a lot of injuries before and it kept on going here.

“So, Oscar was unlucky last season with the injury, this is a different one than what he had last season. And it's true, he's been unlucky, but he's not a player where the medical staff thinks that he's somebody who gets fast injuries or easy injuries or whatever, that he's not robust enough or whatever.

“It can also happen in the career of a footballer, and I hope for him, this is the last one. Because in all the transfers that we made, there's a clear view from the medical staff to dig into the past of players and to have their opinion about players who are in the building, if they are sustainable to play a lot of games in a season, if they're strong enough of that.

“So that's one of the important points when making a decision about signing a player or not. So that was the same case with Oscar, where everybody from the medical staff was convinced that he's a player who will not have a lot of injuries.”

Then there are players nearing the end of their contracts. Tom Lawrence, in a rich vein of form right now, is a free agent next summer and can talk to other clubs in January. “Yes. I know that,” says Clement when the Welsh midfielder’s situation is put to him. “So we need to solve that before the end of the season and what are we going to do with that. We will look in the future about that and what is the best solution to do about that.”

There is still so much for Clement to work on at Rangers - on and off the pitch.