Chris
Former Rangers starlet Ryan Hardie admits that a league title win might just be too much for Philippe Clement this season – with cup competitions being the main focus.
The Belgian joined Rangers at the start of last week, and he’s been dealt a poor hand by Michael Beale with the Light Blues sat seven points behind their bitter rivals. A 4-0 win over Hibs showed what the new boss was about and that he might be able to claw the lead back – but with Celtic beating Hearts 4-1 away from home, it shows the task at hand.
There will likely be three more Old Firm derbies this season which would tip the balance in Rangers’ favour should they win every game, but Hardie knows that is too much to ask of Clement given that he is still finding his feet in Govan.
Instead the current Plymouth striker has backed the new gaffer to win the cup competitions instead to drill some confidence back into Ibrox – and he believes that a fully happy ground is the ‘best place in the world’ once it gets going.
the striker said: “The first thing that will happen with any new manager to come in is that they will want to hit the ground running, so there will be a reaction straight away, and hopefully they [Rangers] can start moving up the table and getting some more points.
“The short term will be narrowing the gap [to Celtic]. They can’t think that they’re going to overtake Celtic straight away – it’s working at it bit-by-bit, and they’re still in the cups and Europa League, so a successful season will be if they go on and do well in those competitions as well.
“Football speaks for itself – once you’re winning games, it [Rangers] is the best place in the world to be playing football. The backing that the Rangers team gets is second to none. Once they start winning games, it’ll be more of a free-flowing rhythm, and hopefully once they can get into that they can continue.”
