Philippe Clement demands Rangers improvement as Tom Lawrence injury update provided

Rangers manager Phillipe Clement has demanded more ruthlessness in front of goal from his side following a narrow 1-0 win over Hearts on Wednesday night as the Light Blues remained eight points behind rivals Celtic.

Abdallah Sima netted the only goal of the game with 34 minutes gone but the visitors missed a host of good chances as they failed to make the game more comfortable. Rangers had 22 shots but managed to find the target with just five of those. Hearts had the same number of shots on target but had 10 fewer efforts at goal.

"For sure it’s a very important win,” said Clement, whose side have a game in hand over Celtic as they seek to reduce the gap to the league leaders.

“We created a lot of chances but that’s still a working point. We need to be more clinical. We need to kill off the game if we can and get the second goal, it would have been a different end to the game because it allowed Hearts to stay in the game and with every long ball or long throw, they were looking for the chance that drops to someone’s feet to finish off.

“We had five big chances but for me, with our qualities, it should be at least three goals. So more things to work on."

The win was marred by another injury to Tom Lawrence, who was forced off in the first half in only his fourth game back from his latest injury blow. The 2022 summer signing injured his Achilles early last campaign and missed the rest of the season, and had been absent for eight of the first 11 Scottish Premiership matches this term.

Clement added: “We need to assess that (Lawrence) tomorrow, that’s the downside. It’s not good to change players in the first half. We’ve lost Borna before this game. It’s difficult more me in this moment because I have never had it in a team that I worked with, that so many players fall out injured.

“We also don’t have the time to train them and make them stronger because we have game by game by game. We need a lot of good work until January, until then we need to puzzle every time to find the best 11 for that game and make the right changes. Borna is a small muscle problem so I don’t know how long he will be out. Tom is also a muscle problem, we will see tomorrow if it is bad or not.”