Heading into Rangers’ Europa League clash against Tottenham Hotspur, depending where you look you might think the Ibrox side were favourites.
Spurs are apparently a team in regression, Ange Postecoglou under pressure as his team slip into the bottom half of the Premier League.
With a number of Spurs players also big injury doubts for the game, some might even be thinking we’re facing the Spurs second string. Spoiler alert, we’re not.
Rangers manager Philippe Clement isn’t buying talk of Tottenham’s demise and reckons such suggestions are premature in the extreme.
Why? Because only a couple of weeks ago were Spurs hammering Premier League champions Manchester City 4-0.
Philippe Clement refutes talk of Spurs’ demise
“It’s how you see things,” said Clement, when a journalist suggested Spurs are in a ‘bad place’ at the present moment.
“I think a few weeks ago I saw them play against Man City. They were not in such a bad place at that moment.
“So it’s Premier League, it’s the highest level in the world in that way. And things are really close together, so you can lose points there.
“I think it’s still a really good team.
“It’s a big challenge, but that’s what we like, that’s what we love, that’s what we want here also.
“We had already in this past year a few really good opponents here in European nights. This club has a big history in that.
“So for the players, these are very challenging and really nice evenings that they can write history in that way.
“So that’s why players want to play for Rangers also, or it’s one of the reasons for that.
“If they would have won all the games until now in the Premier League, I still would go out to win the game with my team.
“That’s the mentality I want to see from my players also.
“If you start to calculate and doubt and they are good and they’re not good and this is really good.
“We played with Brugge against Messi, Neymar and Mbappé and with Monaco also.
“So, before the game, if you show the images of them, what they did in their career, it’s better to stay home. But it doesn’t work that way. That’s not football.
”So, with good collective things, you can do really good things and get results.
”And this team can also do that with very good collective things and individual actions around that. But it’s about the team performance.
“It’s not, like I said, and maybe some people took my words a little bit wrong, after the Ross County game, it’s not only about money.
“It’s also about work and what players do together.
“Otherwise, it would be easy and every team that has more money, they win every time.
“That’s not the case, but the others need to work more. And that’s what we need to do tomorrow evening.”
Rangers manager wants memorable night
Philippe Clement was also asked about ‘bridging the gap in finances’ between Rangers and Tottenham Hotspur.
Spurs operate in an whole other stratosphere to Rangers financially, with the megabucks TV deal fuelling the Premier League’s international dominance.
Insisting that everything can be bridged in one night, Philippe Clement has challenged his players to make this Europa League clash one to remember.
”Everything can be bridged in one night,” said Clement. “So I’m getting old.
“So I had the luck, and it’s not only luck, it’s also a lot of hard work, to have as a player and as a manager several nights of those that the gap was amazingly big.
”And those are also the best nights.
“If you then perform and you get the results, those are also the nights that you remember all of your life.
“Those are also the moments that, as a player, you remember your teammates really well.
“The moments of success, the moment of doing something special, so in that way, I hope the players can give themselves and as a team a special night tomorrow.
“I don’t want to look too old, because you’re going to look up how long it was ago.
”But for example, with Bruges winning in the Champions League in AC Milan 0-1, the team that the year before won the Champions League with Dida, Cafu, Costacurta, Maldini, Seedorf, Shevchenko, Ingaghi, and a few really good guys on the bench also. So that was a really special evening.
“And still, if we meet each other, and it doesn’t happen so much, people still talk about that evening together. So I had a few of those.
“Rangers have also several of those in the history and those are the special evenings. So it’s a really nice stage for my players.“
When asked if he believes his Rangers team can get a result v Spurs, Clement said: “Yeah, I’m convinced that’s possible, yes.”
