Inside Rangers' pre-season: Clement talks and new training

Philippe Clement’s squad journey across Europe with five new additions to the squad in the form of Liam Kelly, Jefte, Oscar Cortes, Hamza Igamane and Clinton Nsiala.

READ MORE: Check all the Rangers transfer news & rumours before the transfer window

Questions still remain over the futures of several members of the Belgian’s squad, however, while the delayed building works in the Copland Road stand at Ibrox mean the early stages of next season at the very least will be played away from home. There is more than a dose of uncertainty on and off the pitch less than a month before an August which features nine high-pressure matches.

Todd Cantwell’s future is one of many unknowns as Clement and Nils Koppen seek to put their stamp on the Rangers squad. Sam Lammers will be allowed to leave and is expected to return to the Netherlands with a number of clubs interested in the 26-year-old forward. Meanwhile, as the Rangers Review revealed last week, the club have interest in Cyriel Dessers from Saudi Arabia and several European outfits. It’s understood around £4.5million, the total paid for the Nigerian forward last summer, is the asking price set for a player who struggled to settle in Glasgow before ending the campaign with a respectable 22 goals.

One other new face at Ibrox is Andries Ulderink who joined the club as Clement’s assistant manager late last month from Royal Antwerp.

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Clement had always previously taken two assistants, Johan van Rumst and Jonas Ivens, after moving to Genk, Club Brugge and Monaco. However, he arrived in Glasgow with only one backroom staff member of his own in Stepehn Van der Hayden.

The Belgian manager has taken a large majority of training since joining last October and planned when the time was right to appoint another member of staff to his coaching team. As Clement reiterated when speaking to RangersTV recently the arrival of Ulderink will enable the manager to hold a wider role unrestricted to the day-to-day leading of training sessions.

“He is not someone I knew personally but I heard a lot of good things in clubs he was at, we had really good talks,” he said.

“I wanted to make our coaching staff bigger to focus even more on individual sides of players to develop them better. I cannot be everywhere at same moment so it was important to have really good addition with lots of experience and a loud voice.”

Clement has spoken previously of just how important a pre-season is to establish his ideas and earn the necessary time required to build a new squad. As reiterated publicly to RangersTV last week, pre-season will see individual talks scheduled with every player in the evenings, a practice that has been commonplace at previous clubs.

Having outsourced psychologists to better understand his players in the past, Clement is a manager who prioritises man-management. As his former assistant, Van Rumst told the Rangers Review.

“His approach is to know each player personally and find out things like who their favourite player is. And then, for example, if an attacker loves Didier Drogba, Philippe will use that player's match clips as a reference point for the individual during their individual development," he said.

“At Brugge and Monaco, we also worked with psychologists to understand each player on a deeper level. What is the best way to help players and how should we coach them individually? Do they need a more direct approach? Will they react well to being called out directly in the dressing room or is it better to be a one-on-one conversation? That allowed Philippe and his staff to tailor their approach to each individual."

There’s also the small matter of injuries to improve. Rangers have been hamstrung by absences for a number of seasons and there’s a belief that while change is required behind the scenes to fix issues, consistency is also important.

Clement has explained that only a pre-season tailored to his high-intensity style of football can solve availability issues and build specific fitness. After a 2-0 Scottish Cup win over Hibernian last season the manager suggested that only five players (James Tavermier, John Lundstram, Connor Goldson, John Souttar and Jack Butland) had the necessary fitness to play matches every three days.

He told Rangers TV recently: "Firstly, we are looking to build the physical condition. The team missed that a lot last season. They were not prepared to play every three days at a high intensity. Because of that, we had a lot of injuries, so that is a big concern now, to train really hard and prepare really well.

"Not only ball exercises and running but a lot of exercises to strengthen their bodies. We are going to work on that. We can say to all the fans that the players are working really hard in the next couple of weeks to be stronger again next season."

Rangers play a closed-door friendly against Standard Liege on Wednesday before they face Ajax at the home of WHC Wezep on Saturday.