While there is some concern about how many Rangers players are ‘good’ enough to be called up for international duty, those who have been at Auchenhowie with manager Philippe Clement for the past week or so and will get that proper full time with the manager, those two weeks’ mini-preseason, are more important in the short term. John Souttar, Connor Goldson, Leon Balogun, Ben Davies, Johnly Yfeko, Borna Barisic, John Lundstram, Nico Raskin, Kieran Dowell, Jose Cifuentes (home early) Todd Cantwell, Tom Lawrence, Rabbi Matondo, Kemar Roofe, Abdallah Sima, Scott Wright, Danilo, Cyriel Dessers, and Sam Lammers will all have a full two weeks with this manager, which those who are away will miss.
That’s the bulk of the squad that gets an extra two weeks on the training ground, and it has to be said, only breaking-through Ross McCausland and arguably Ryan Jack and Ridvan Yilmaz of those who went away on the break are players of major relevance missing out here.
This means that despite our misgivings about how good the squad is and how few got call-ups, the flip side is the manager has had these two weeks to work with just about 95% of his whole group and get more ideas in there.
Of course, the return to action is pretty hectic; the only place in Scotland Rangers get a major match on the road aside from Parkhead is Pittodrie, and that’s where we’ll be this weekend, but in many ways, it’s the perfect return.
It gives us a tough domestic match (Clement’s first real test as Rangers manager domestically) while also showing how much progress there’s been in these two weeks.
The Livi win wasn’t absolutely vintage, but it did the job, and now these 22 players who stayed at home have had 7+ days already so far to get in ‘extra tuition’ with the manager and continue Clement’s excellent start at Rangers. Now they have another 6.
While it’s never ideal for a club our size not to have a lot of internationalists away on duty, the silver lining, in this case, is that still relatively new manager Clement gets a solid fortnight with the lion’s share of his players.
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