PHILIPPE CLEMENT has praised Vaclav Cerny’s qualities after the Czech winger netted a brace to power Rangers to victory over St. Johnstone this evening.
Cerny netted either side of the half-time interval to deliver a fourth successive domestic victory for the Light Blues.
It was a performance where Rangers were in complete control, although boss Clement says his side perhaps lacked some sharpness in the final third to kill off St. Johnstone earlier in the contest.
Speaking to RangersTV after the triumph, the Belgian commented: “Pleased is a good word.
“It was not a top performance, but it’s important to win and keep a clean sheet. We need to have respect for every opponent, and you saw today also in other games that the two teams ahead of us had to score in the last five minutes.
“We need to take every game seriously and that’s what we did. But we need to raise the quality also.
“It’s at the end of a series of a game every three days, and perhaps the team lacked that freshness in that way.
“I wanted them to score the third or fourth goal to really kill off the game.
“We didn’t do that and the goalkeeper made some really good saves; we had some opportunities where we could have had more composure like the two goals we scored.”
On Cerny’s two-goal contribution, Clement continued: “Vaclav showed a lot of composure in his moments, and it’s those moments that I want to see more and more from the team.
“He’s been working hard for the team and the club. He’s a player who is just in the building and people forget that; some players need six months to adapt to a new environment.
“In that way, he has already done some really good things and he will only grow in the future to become more important for the club.”
The victory was the perfect way to sign off for the second international break for the Gers who, along with a fourth successive domestic triumph, recorded their fourth clean sheet on the spin.
Clement says the disappointment from the midweek European defeat at home to Olympique Lyonnais was difficult to shake, but he believes his side are making good strides heading into the autumn months.
He added: “There’s a really positive environment and a good dressing room where everyone is working hard.
“It’s just about getting experience together, playing more, and everyone getting more fluid. That’s the work to do in the next weeks and months.
“It’s normal with so many new players that we have work with that, but it’s important to take the results along the way. Of course, I would have preferred another result on Thursday, but we knew it was a really big challenge.
“That’s why Vaclav was so disappointed that he didn’t score at the start of the game, and Tav likewise, because that could have given a totally different momentum of the game.
“But we don’t need to look back now; we need to look forward and hopefully our internationals come back in good health.
“We’ll have two good training weeks with the rest.”