Philippe Clement only has eyes for Rangers despite leapfrogging Aberdeen

Philippe Clement watched Rangers finally overtake second-placed Aberdeen with a 1-0 win over Dundee and then insisted his focus is only on his side.

The Light Blues were trailing the Dons by nine points in the Premiership seven weeks ago but a Vaclav Cerny winner at Ibrox and a 3-1 home defeat for Jimmy Thelin’s side against Hibernian left Rangers one point ahead with a game in hand.

Rangers also moved eight points behind leaders Celtic, who play Dundee United at Tannadice on Sunday.

On the day that Rangers celebrated the 125th anniversary of Ibrox, and goalkeeper Liam Kelly was thrown in for his debut as a late replacement for Jack Butland who had to leave suddenly before the game for “private reasons”, Rangers hit the woodwork four times and missed several other chances.

Clement said: “I told you guys and maybe you don’t believe me, but it’s about us, what we do.

“I’m convinced that we can make a good season if we focus on ourselves and not be focused on other teams. It’s about us taking the points and not looking at other teams.

“So we will continue in that way and making the team better and progress and taking more points than we did in the first couple of months because it was not enough.

“We all know that, we all knew that. So we want to make a better second part of the season.

“That is a well-deserved victory but you want to score more goals, you want to entertain the fans more than we did.

“A quite special game also hitting four times a crossbar, it doesn’t happen so much also but we had to be more clinical in moments for sure in the second half and you know in the first half it can be difficult to find the spaces because they defend with a lot of numbers, really low. Spaces are small.

“We still had our chances there. You come out of the dressing room in a good way, we could give some tweaks during half-time, where to find spaces, you score directly and then you should score the second goal and then you kill the belief more.”

Dundee boss Tony Docherty bemoaned losing a goal so soon into the second half, with Cerny’s counter-attack effort surviving a VAR check for offside.

He said: “I was pleased at half-time and asked them to be a wee bit braver in the second half to try and get something and I thought we did that.

“We were good in possession and stripping it back, I have to be proud of that performance and if we do that we’ll be alright.

“We were in the ascendancy and they countered. I thought it was offside but I’ve seen it back and it’s onside.

“VAR got it right and that’s the justification for it. I’m disappointed with that but in the 94th minute we were still in it.

“I have to be pleased with it. Six players were 22 or under and there were three academy graduates. I’ve got to be proud of that because that’s what the identity of the club is all about.

“Coming up against a team in form, there was a lot of development and if we take that forwards we’ll be in a good place to pick up points.”