With the international break now in full flow, as far as domestic football goes there’s no bigger story than Rangers’ continued search for a new manager.
James Bisgrove and John Bennett are in London conducting the final round of interviews with a shortlist of candidates as they aim to find Michael Beale’s replacement. The club’s next game takes place a week on Saturday at Ibrox against Hibernian.
Kevin Muscat, Oliver Glasner and Philippe Clement are a few of the names in the frame. It was the latter who was addressed by fellow countryman Nicolas Raskin following Rangers’ 3-0 win over St Mirren on Sunday. The midfielder was directly asked about the Belgian manager when speaking to the media. He admits Clement would bring some much-needed order to the club with on-field matters.
“I don’t know him personally but he did very well with the two teams he had in Belgium,” the 22-year-old explained. “And he also did incredibly well at Monaco. So let’s see what happens in the future.
“Would he be a good fit here? Yeah, I think he’d bring some clarity and an attacking style, so I think he’d be good.”
On Beale’s sacking, Raskin added: “It’s a bit sad for everybody because the gaffer believed in everybody and put us on the field.
“We were in a bad spiral. Obviously, I can’t really say too much - we just weren’t good enough to deserve the wins. Now it’s time to look forward, to work hard and then to grow. We’ll take it game after game and look forward.”
James Tavernier scored twice during the weekend win in Paisley while Abdallah Sima continued his fine form in front of goal to make it eight in total for the Brighton loanee.
Noticeably after the first, a penalty tucked home by the captain during the first half, the full team celebrates together. There seemed to be an internal recognition of that moment and the importance of finally delivering something positive after two damaging defeats against Aberdeen and Aris Limassol.
That was exactly the case, according to Raskin. He said: “We need to feel that kind of emotion together. I think we’ve maybe missed a bit of that emotion after goals and celebrating our wins. That’s important because we know how vital every single win is to achieving our goal.
“That’s something we’ve spoken about. It’s about trying to be more positive about every single goal, every single win, every single point because that is how you move forward and achieve the things you want to do. That’s so important because when you are in a hard period, you need to be super positive to get yourself out of that situation.
“That’s what we’re trying to do, to stick together and push each other. That’s why we were so happy with Tav’s goals and happy with Abdallah’s goal. We just wish everyone could score so that we could all go out and do our best.
“It’s always hard when you can’t achieve what you want to do. We all want to win but we’ve done the wrong things, I think.
“Now we just have to work well and build on Sunday’s performance over the next few games because we have some important fixtures coming up. We have to stick together and work hard as that’s the only way to go forward and to achieve something good.”
Meanwhile, St Mirren defender Scott Tanser insists it was just a bad day at the office for him and his teammates.
The left-back – who recently signed a contract extension until 2026 – has been part of Stephen Robinson’s well-oiled machine that has built upon their impressive form last season. The loss to Rangers was disappointing, but the break allows for some reflection.
He said: “We will review it but these games are not going to make our season. There is still a long way to go and we have to look forward now.
"Everyone expects them to be in the top two all the time so we will do our best to fight against them and push as much as we can. We had a great start and we hopefully want to be up there near the end of the season.
"Of course, no one expects us to be up there. At the moment we are defying the odds. But as a group, we believe we should be up there. Obviously, we finished top six last year and we want to finish even better this season.”
