PHILIPPE Clement has revealed that he handed Fabio Silva his Rangers debut against Kilmarnock yesterday because he had been so impressed with his new acquisition’s impact during his first training session.
Clement had indicated that the Wolves loanee might not feature in the final cinch Premiership match before the winter break after the Celtic game at Parkhead on Saturday when he explained Silva had not trained with his new team mates.
However, the 21-year-old player, who his parent club signed from Porto for £35m back in 2020, came on for the final 20 minutes of the league fixture in Govan yesterday and helped the home team to see out a 3-1 victory.
Afterwards the Belgian confessed the Portuguese forward, who had not played competitively since a game against Sheffield United at the start of November, had made such an impression on Monday as he worked with his new team mates at Auchenhowie that he was confident about giving him a runout.
“First, I think it’s always great if a player does good things in training, and he did yesterday,” he said. “To give him minutes at Ibrox? That’s a magical place to play the first time and he had to feel it also.
“Then you go also with that feeling into this break. It’s different to when you are on the bench all the time. He understands the story because we had a lot of talks before he came about football about and how I see players playing. We spoke about several positions – not only one – where he can play and how I see that.
“He could have gone to places where he could earn much more money, but he came for the football story and for the tradition of the club also and to win trophies because he is somebody who is really ambitious.
“So that is already a very positive thing, because it is not easy as an attacking player to come in to a new team where you don’t know the other guys or how to run and play or who gives decisive balls or who likes to dribble.
“You need to get a connection with them and you see already that he is a player who will suit the way we want to play football.”
Clement stressed that he will be working hard to bring in more new players during the January transfer window.
Asked how active he would be during the coming weeks, he said: “Very active every day, by looking at a lot of players together with people in the club. And then we will see what we can make happen and the things we want. We are not going to sign 10 players also.”
