Kieran Dowell pleased to see Rangers able to ‘grind’ out win after tough week

Kieran Dowell believes Rangers showed the resilient side to their game in Sunday’s narrow 1-0 win over Hibernian.

The Light Blues turned in a terrific performance to beat Malmo 2-0 in their Europa League opener in Sweden on Thursday but it was all a bit flat on their return to the William Hill Premiership for the lunchtime kick-off at Ibrox.

Midfielder Tom Lawrence broke the deadlock in the 34th minute with a superb strike from the edge of the box and then Rangers keeper Jack Butland saved a Mykola Kukharevych penalty just before the break.

Philippe Clement’s side continued to fend off Hibs for the win which takes them five points behind Celtic and Aberdeen while registering their fourth clean sheet in a row.

Midfielder Dowell, who did not feature against Malmo and came off the bench against the Easter Road side, said: “Every game’s different. I think there’s positives and negatives to take from every game, even in midweek.

“The positives from Sunday, another clean sheet, that’s a few in a row now, isn’t it?

“They didn’t really have too many clinical chances.

“But what we need to do is to kill the game, get that second goal like we did in midweek. Like we have in other games.

“Obviously after a tough week, going to Europe, going to Malmo in the week, it was one of those you have to grind out in the end.

“There was a lot of tired legs. Credit to a lot of the lads, they had to put in a shift this week.

“Like I said, it was all (about) grinding out results and we did that in the end.

“I thought it was a brilliant performance from the lads away from home in midweek. That was probably our best performance of the season so far.

“It’s building that consistency, but at the same time getting those results.

“And we’ve got a few lads who are going to have to play a lot of 90 minutes throughout the weeks, it’s like I said at the start, it’s grinding out those results as well sometimes.”

Rangers’ Czech Republic international Vaclav Cerny was barracked by frustrated fans in the second half when he passed the ball back when he could have moved forward.

The on-loan Wolfsburg winger seemed to react with a gesture to the supporters and when asked if Cerny needs to get used to the demands at Ibrox, Dowell said: “I don’t know. He’s probably had a long week himself. He might have felt a bit leggy and thought, I can’t do that one.

“But we all know coming to this club that the demand is to play forward and try and score goals and attack.

“I think that the manager is of the same mindset as that.

“So I’m not sure (what happened with Cerny), maybe it was just a moment in the game, but we’re all on the same page that we want to go forward whenever possible.

“I think since the manager has come in, that’s the way he wants to play football.”