Rangers boss Philippe Clement cites Celtic’s Nicolas Kuhn as reason not to judge players too early

Philippe Clement referenced the turnaround in form of Celtic attacker Nicolas Kuhn as he looks for more goals from his Rangers side.

The Ibrox side are 11 points behind Brendan Rodgers’ Premiership leaders and seven adrift of second-placed Aberdeen.

Rangers have also scored just 18 league goals to the Hoops’ 40 and the Dons’ 29 with the 1-0 win over St Johnstone at McDiarmid Park on Sunday coming via a Jason Holt own goal which highlighted their problems.

Ahead of the visit of Kilmarnock to Ibrox on Wednesday night, the Belgian pointed to Kuhn, who had a slow start after signing from Rapid Vienna for a reported £3m in January before emerging as a key player for Celtic this season, scoring 11 goals in 19 appearances so far, as evidence of how it can take players time to settle into Scottish football.

Asked what his side had to show against Killie, Clement said: “To score more goals. I think that’s the major one.

“We don’t concede much, but we have to score more goals, be more lethal in the final third and looking how we can create this with the players available.

“We had a lot of good chances that were saved really well against Dundee United (1-1) and then St Johnstone.

“You always want more, of course, but you need to create this automatism between players in that way.

“Look at the starting line-up offensively, there’s not one player from last season who started in the last game. We have a lot of new players in that area and you need to find connections.

“I don’t want to make comparisons too much with other teams, but the better player in the offensive part on the other side of the town was not starting six months ago or last season.

“He needed time after the transfer to get his rhythm, to get this connection with other players.

“We’re working on this with all these guys, and it’s about small details, and it’s about getting the confidence and getting the goals.

“There are several important offensive players that we were missing. Danilo is coming back now. He was all the time not available. Ianis Hagi is coming back, giving other options.

“Hamza Igamane is taking really good steps. One month ago, a lot of people were asking, why do we buy a Moroccan guy who doesn’t have any experience at this level?

“So people start to see now why. But he needs to take further steps in the next couple of months.

“So we start to get options there in the offensive part, and that’s crucial for sure, in a club like Rangers where we have so many games. We will have 16 games in the next eight weeks.

“So it’s going to be very important that you can have a kind of rotation in those positions, but a rotation that you can put quality in every minute that players are on the pitch. That’s crucial to get results.”