NEDIM Bajrami last night argued the spirited second half fightback that Rangers staged in the Premier Sports Cup semi-final against Motherwell at Hampden showed just how firmly he and his team mates are behind their manager Philippe Clement.
Clement was under intense personal pressure going into the last four fixture in the wake of a 2-1 loss to Aberdeen at Pittodrie on Wednesday night which left the Ibrox club nine points off top spot in the William Hill Premiership table after just 10 league games.
His men squandered a raft of scoring chances during the opening 45 minutes yesterday and were 1-0 down at half-time after allowing opposition midfielder Andy Halliday to break the deadlock.
However, they equalised early in the second half through Cyriel Dessers and Bajrami sent them through to a final against their city rivals Celtic next month when he netted a deflected shot with nine minutes of regulation time remaining.
The Albanian internationalist, a £3.4m signing from Sassoulo in Italy during the summer, was delighted to clinch the hard-fought victory because it eased, for the time being at least, the criticism of Clement.
Furious fans and media pundits called for the Belgian, who lifted the Premier Sports Cup during his first season in Scotland, to be sacked in the wake of the Aberdeen loss in midweek.
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“I'm always happy to score and to help the team,” said Bajrami. “But I am happy not only for myself, but even for the manager. I think we have every game the same pressure, it's not only if we play Premiership, or Europa League.
“Rangers always have pressure and we try to win every game. But I don't think too much about this, the pressure. So we focus on our games, take it game by game. We have a lot of games. There's nothing too much outside of the pitch, I don't think about it too much.
“We are always behind the manager, we fight for him, we fight for every game. But we fight for us and for our fans. We try to do that in every game, step by step. We give our best. We had a good second half, scored two nice goals and so we are in the final.”
“We know because every game is hard for us. We always have, most of the time anyway, the ball. They are good at defending so we had to keep patient. But we believed for the 90 minutes and we showed our quality today.
“I don't mean small teams, but when teams like this score you have to be strong and not lose the second goal. We did that in the second half. Our defence was quality because they didn’t get the second goal and we won the game. This was important for us.
“We also scored two nice goals in the second half, the second one a counter-attack with a nice pass from Václav [Cerny}.”
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Cerny, the Czech Republic internationalist who joined Rangers on loan from Bundesliga outfit Wolfsburg in Germany back in July, was outstanding against Motherwell and deservedly picked up the sponsor’s Man of the Match award at the end of the 90 minutes.
Bajrami was teed up for the winner by his team mate and admitted he has enjoyed playing with his fellow new recruit. “I think he has good qualities,” he said. “We have a good relationship on the pitch and today he had nice assists.”
“I think the important thing is to create chances,” he said. “Maybe in the last 30 metres we have to be more concrete, to score even more goals and to kill off the game earlier. Now for Olympiacos.”
Bajrami revealed he has an extra incentive to help Rangers beat Celtic in the Premier Sports Cup final at Hampden next month. “I've never won a cup,” he said. “I have never played in a cup final. Maybe now it's time to win a cup.”
The Swiss-born wide man, however, is focusing fully on their midweek fixture now and is determined to help the Ibrox club boost their chances of reaching the Europa League knockout rounds in Greece.
“The cup final is a special game,” he said. “But it's far away, so we have still time to think about it. The next game is Olympiacos and we have to think game by game.”
