PHILIPPE Clement has admitted he is unsure about the extent of the knee injury Rangers winger Oscar Cortes suffered in the William Hill Premiership draw with Hearts at Tynecastle today.
Colombian internationalist Cortes hobbled off early in the second half of a league encounter which finished goalless at the end of the 90 minutes and was replaced by Rabbi Matondo.
The Ibrox club take on Dynamo Kyiv in the first leg of their Champions League third qualifying round double header in Poland on Tuesday evening and Clement does not know if his summer acquisition will be available.
“I cannot say at the moment,” he said. “He fell down in a duel in a bad way in the first half and hurt his knee. But he said, and he was also tested by the doctor, that he was fine for the second half.
“With his first sprint, he felt too much pain so we had to take him off. It’s not the ideal thing of course because you lose a changing [substitution] moment in the second half, in this period when players are less fresh at the end of the game.
“But it’s experience [for] a young player also. Knowing your body, what is pain, what you can do and what you cannot do. That’s part of the journey of young players to get a better assessment around that.”
Rangers struggled to contain Hearts during the opening 45 minutes of their Premiership opener – but they were far better after half-time and striker Cyriel Dessers hit the crossbar and the post with a header after getting on the end of a Ridvan Yilmaz cross.
Clement, though, confessed that his charges have to perform at a higher level than they did in their first competitive fixture of the 2024/25 campaign in the coming weeks.
“I was not satisfied with the first half, the first half hour for sure,” he said. “We lacked intensity in the duels. There were a lot of long balls where we didn’t win the first duel, also not the second duel, also not the third duel. Because of that we came under pressure.
“With the ball, we were not calm enough, not brave enough to do the right things and be in the right positions like we want. So it was really important to have those 15 minutes during half-time to put things straight, show them where we were going wrong and change that.
“It changed a lot in the second half. We took control of the game and played better football. We had good chances also and we dominated the second half. I expect that to happen during the game, and that’s why we need experience on the pitch to guide things. Those are things to work on for the future."
Clement continued: “You always need to see whether it was the correct result or not. I think it was a fair result today. The first half was for Hearts, the second half was for us.
“We had good chances to finish off the game. I prefer to be decisive in the second half because then the other team cannot come back.
“We were really close with Cyriel’s header, against the crossbar and the post - that doesn’t happen that much. And we had good offensive actions, with new players coming into the team and recognising the spaces better.
“It’s a progression in that way, and we need to say that it was a fair point that we got. Of course I wanted to get the three points like all the players, but we need to look forward now and not be sticking in results all the time.
“I am never happy. I always want more. I want better. I want to improve things. I would have loved to win today, we were really close. But we could have lost this game also.
“I don’t think we could have done much more work in the last couple of weeks in training to be much better than we were today, but we still have a way to go and we will improve in the next couple of weeks and the next couple of months in that way and we become stronger and stronger.”
Asked if new signings Robin Propper and Vaclav Cerny, who came on in the second half against Hearts to make his debut, could feature against Kyiv, Clement said: “It is too early to ask this question now.
“I need to see how players come out of this game, how do they recover before Tuesday in such a short time. That is why Kyiv also do not play this weekend, for example.
“We need to see to make the right decisions for that game and then the game that comes after and the week after. It will be every three days looking at the form of the players physically but also mentally, but for sure physically. Are they ready to play every time?
“I don’t think we have many players now who can play nine games in four weeks but that’s a problem with all the teams that play early in Europe. It is the same everywhere. We need to make smart rotations.
“Tuesday is again a massive game, an important game against a team who could rest this weekend to be fresh on Tuesday. We need to put all our focus on that.”
