Philippe Clement marvels at Rangers transfer business as 3 'giant steps' spark Ibrox excitement over star

Rangers suffered another spirit-crushing backwards step in the Scottish Premiership as they twice threw away a lead to draw 3-3 with Hibs at Easter Road on Sunday - but the performance of one Ibrox star has been commended by Philippe Clement.

The Light Blues boss has suggested that many onlookers from afar believed it would take at least 12 months for Moroccan wonderkid Hamza Igamane to become a first-team regular, but the 22-year-old hitman has received extensive praise for his rapid development in recent months.

Igamane notched a hat-trick in Leith on a day of mixed emotions for the Rangers squad as Clement watched with pride as his summer signing put on a stirring display before his hard work was undone by some slack defending and a controversial penalty award.

Clement, however, is glad that Igamane has finally started to justify why the club paid around £2 million to bring him to Glasgow at the start of the season after being grilled about the frontman’s slow start to life in Scotland.

Asked if Igamane had provided a fresh demonstration of why he has such high hopes for the former FAR Rabat star, Clement said: “Yes, and it's about continuation in that way. I got a lot of questions at the beginning of the season about why we’d done that transfer. So it's good that people are seeing why now.

“Hamza is somebody who is really hungry to become better. He made giant steps the last three, four months, technically, tactically for sure, and even more physically, to cope to the rhythm that we play here in the league, to cope also to get more playing minutes, to be able to do that.

“So it's exciting to see a young guy, where we knew he had a lot of talent, but there was a lot of work to do with. I had a lot of contact with people in Morocco about that before we signed him, and everybody said he will need at least one year to be a starting XI player. So he's taking faster steps than people predicted.”

Clement’s delight at Igamane’s progress was obvious but he was left extremely frustrated at the way his side threw away a two-goal cushion in the capital after Igamane’s brace inside the opening 20 minutes. Hibs responded through two Martin Boyle goals either side of the break, including one from the penalty spot - a decision that the Belgian boss felt should never have been given.

Ianis Hagi was penalised for tripping Josh Campbell in the box, with referee John Beaton’s spot-kick award given the green light by VAR, but it was the visitors who still let three points slip through their grasp when Rocky Bushiri nodded home from a corner just moments late on after Igamane had completed his treble.

Clement opted to pick the same starting line-up which delivered such a positive performance to dismantle Celtic just three days earlier, but he admits his players were showing signs of fatigue towards the end of this Premiership classic.

“It has to do with freshness, in that way, he added. “That's normal also. For the moment, we don't have the depth to keep the same level with all the players. You try to make changes, or to create back this quality. But you saw that Ianis Hagi was getting tired, that Nedim Bajrami was getting tired, that Vaclav Cerny was getting tired. So that's normal also, after all the series of games that they played until now.”