Philippe Clement vents over Rangers’ Europa League ‘puzzle’

The Belgian boss has taken charge of one group stage match on the continent so far during his time as manager of the Ibrox club. In only his second overall game as head coach, Rangers earned a 0-0 draw away at Sparta Prague.

Now over the halfway point in the groups this week, the Czech side will make the return journey to Ibrox to start the second round of matches.

Clement will have to make do without Ridvan Yilmaz, Leon Balogun and Kieran Dowell with the trio all left out of the European squad selected by Michael Beale at the start of the season.

With so many injuries still to contend with, that leaves Clement short in certain areas of the field – mainly left-back as was shown in the game in Prague with Rangers changing system to play with a back three and wing-backs.

The 49-year-old doesn’t seem to happy with some of Beale’s selections from the early months of the campaign, admitting it has left him with a difficult situation.

He said: “We still miss a couple of players, we also miss some players that I cannot select on Thursday because they are not on the European list, that I didn’t make in the beginning of the season.

“It is again a puzzle and I expect everybody to be top because it is going to be a really hard game against Prague.”

Meanwhile, Danilo always longed to get his hands on a shirt belonging to his Brazilian idol Ronaldo when he was a young boy growing up in Sao Paulo.

But his dream never, even though he was in the youth ranks at Corinthians in his home city when the legendary forward was playing for the first team there, came true.

So when the Rangers’ forward saw a youngster standing at the side of the Hampden pitch last night wearing a mask similar to the one he has donned since suffering a facial injury and holding his country’s flag he immediately went over and handed him his top.