Philippe Clement hopes Brighton don’t price Abdallah Sima out of a return to Rangers as he targets a summer deal for the Senegalese forward.

Sima became a firm favourite at Ibrox after moving north of the border last term. His campaign was curtailed by injuries in the second half of the season, but he still contributed 16 goals and two assists from 39 outings as Rangers fell short in the Premiership title race and lost the Scottish Cup final to Celtic.

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Clement has clinched a deal to bring Oscar Cortes back to Ibrox after Rangers converted his loan switch from Lens into a permanent switch. Now the Belgian is eager to secure the services of Sima if new Seagulls boss Fabian Hurzeler decides he will not be part of his Premier League squad this term.

“I’ve been in touch with him, of course,” Clement says. “He’s like one of my sons. Abda loves the club. Abda loves the way of playing we had last season and his role in that. He loved his teammates and the staff.

“But at the end of the day, Brighton is the owner so it’s all about the money then. At the moment it’s not possible. But we will see along the way if there comes a possibility because we would love to get him back. We will see if it is possible.”

The loss of Sima in January undermined Clement’s bid to lift the title in his first term at Ibrox. A muscle injury sustained during the African Cup of Nations sidelined him for several weeks and Clement was left with severe selection issues during the Premiership run-in.

Cortes only played a handful of matches after arriving midway through the campaign and striker Danilo suffered a serious knee ligament injury in November. Both were involved in Clement’s squad in Holland last week and will play a key role in the final third this term.

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“For sure,” Clement says when asked about his returning forwards. “In some parts of the season, it was up and down with availability. At one point we lost Abda and Oscar at the same moment, which was a big blow to how we played.

“Losing Dani was the same. He was out for so long. Now it’s about bringing them back in a good way. It can’t be that they are so eager to play that you end up killing them now.

“It takes a lot of discussions with the medical staff, the performance team on what to do with them, how to train with them, what exercises they can do, how much of the games they can play and then build up the story.

“But it takes a while. You can’t just give them a drink and bang, tomorrow they are back fit. It doesn’t work that way.

“Those are the things that fans don’t have an idea about. I understand. But we have some work to do but that’s the nice thing, otherwise it would be boring.”

Clement cut a hugely frustrated figure at various points of the season as the Ibrox injury curse left him down to the bare bones. A repeat of those issues this term would severely impact on the Belgian’s bid to add to the League Cup that he lifted in December.

Rangers have made changes behind the scenes at Auchenhowie in a bid to solve a long-standing problem. Clement has chosen not to put those alterations into the public domain.

“I don’t want to go into too much detail because I also have respect for people who were in the building,” Clement says when asked about what had been done in the medical department. “We had to raise the levels there and to do things better. It is not only one thing that because of that we had a lot of injuries.

“There were several things. It is not about pointing to one person or two persons or whatever. It is about a lot of things, about raising levels and quality to get a better total in that way and to get better players. I am very confident the changes will make that better.”