One of the first things that irked Philippe Clement when he took over as Rangers manager was the condition of the players.
The squad had a lengthy injury list but it was also ill-equipped for the challenges ahead according to the new Gers boss.
At Ibrox tonight Philippe Clement will likely ring the changes again, with his Rangers team looking sharper by the week, but what has been the difference between now and the beginning of the season?
Philippe Clement already getting Rangers squad into shape
The warning signs were there in pre-season.
There was the odd decent passage of play but results weren’t great and performances, in general, were poor.
What stood out the most was how fatigued the players looked.
Speaking after the 3-1 defeat to Olympiakos, Michael Beale explained why:
“I’m fine at the moment because we had a double session Monday and trained hard yesterday so I know where the boys are at, we’re challenging them and will see the benefits of that when the season starts.
“We know we have to push the group because from the start of the season, we go into a three-game week for the rest of the month. It’s important we have things in our legs and I don’t want to stop training hard going into a game.”
Unfortunately, we never saw the benefits and Rangers soon replaced Beale with Philippe Clement.
What is puzzling, is why did the team look so unfit after spending most of pre-season doing double sessions and going into games with heavy legs rather than working on shape or a game plan?
Clement has only been at the club a matter of months and with only a short period of time to implement his ideas, and yet a response in his pre-match press conference has raised a few eyebrows about the success of his methods:
“We are growing, we are getting better, I think it’s clear for everybody, it’s also clear in the data.
“That there is more distance run, there are more sprints, there is more high intensity than a few months ago but we’re not at our top.
“You need a really good preparation to go to the next level. In this level we are pushing things to make it better and I think it will be better at the end of the season also.”
So, with no pre-season and a congested fixture list, Philippe Clement has still managed to sharpen up his Rangers squad.
Tom Taylor has replaced Jack Ade as head of performance but the latter had a sterling reputation before arriving at Auchenhowie and can’t be held solely responsible for the demands of the previous manager.
What seems to be apparent though is that Clement is managing the players’ minutes on the pitch so that they can do more specific and personal training in between games rather than just doing laps of the training ground.
The exciting thing is, Rangers, in the manager’s own words, still have room to improve under Philippe Clement.
