Philippe Clement impressed as Rangers start Europa League campaign with a win
Philippe Clement hailed Rangers’ convincing 2-0 win over Malmo in their Europa League opener in Sweden as their best performance of the season but is looking for more.
Midfielder Nedim Bajrami scored his first goal for the Ibrox club in less than a minute and the visitors passed up more chances before and after substitute Ross McCausland fired in a superb second in the 76th minute to seal the win on matchday one.
Asked if it was the best performance of the campaign to date, Gers boss Clement said: “Yes, I think so. But it doesn’t mean it’s going to stay the best that we’ve had. I think we need to work hard to make it better and that’s what we’re going to do.
“It was the perfect start to the campaign, and the perfect start to the game also.
“Malmo are a really difficult opponent to play against. They play with a lot of running actions but in a chaotic style – it’s difficult to defend against.
“My players did a massive job sticking to the plan, all game, all 90 minutes.
“The guys who started, the guys who came on. And we used the spaces also in a really good way with the ball. So it was a very mature performance that I saw from my team.
“The only small thing that you can say is if you kill off the game in the first half, then it’s different again.
“But I think they showed a really good game today and we will continue working on the finishing.”
The Belgian explained: “I’m a perfectionist but I’ve been now 30 years in this (football) world…I never played myself the perfect game and I have never seen my team play the perfect game.
“But it’s something you strive for and you work on that to look at all the details that you can improve.
“But also not forgetting the good things that we are doing. And you see more and more that players are getting connections.
“If you see how many new players were on the pitch today who were not here one or two months ago, the team has already made a massive step forward to play that kind of football in this environment against that kind of opponent.”
Clement singled out Northern Ireland international McCausland, whose drive in off the post from the edge of the box gave the Light Blues some breathing space.
The boss added: “I don’t want to point out one player out of this game but I’m going to do it because he’s quite a symbol about working hard and getting the reward.
“That’s Ross. Six months ago, if he came on his left foot, there was no quality in his shots or in his passes because he was not used to doing that.
“But he’s been working really hard every day with the staff together to get the right shots in, first post, second post, to look at the goalkeeper, to get the good technique, to get the good power.
“In that way, he had almost a very important one against (Dinamo) Kyiv and he has now a really important one in Malmo, because it’s a massive goal at that moment to kill off the game and to take even more control.
“It’s about hard work, repeating, repeating, making mistakes, but making it better, and that’s the way we’re going to keep on working with the whole squad together. But Ross is a symbol in that way because of the goal he scored.”