Rangers boss Philippe Clement ‘doesn’t have any clue’ how St Johnstone will play

Philippe Clement admits Rangers will face the unknown when they host St Johnstone on Sunday.

The Perth club sacked Craig Levein last month and appointed Simo Valakari as their new boss during the week.

His first job is to take his side to Ibrox in the William Hill Premiership, although Valakari will be watching from the stand with Andy Kirk and Alex Cleland remaining in charge for Sunday’s match.

The Light Blues will be looking to bounce back from their sobering 4-1 Europa League defeat to French side Lyon on Thursday night before the international break.

Clement told Sky Sports News: “You cannot predict. They had a manager a few weeks ago when we played against them (in a 2-0 Premier Sports Cup win). He was sacked after so the interim manager did the job and did it in a different way.

“Now, a new manager has come in, so we don’t have any clue how they’re going to approach the game.

“So the most important thing stays, like we always do, we look first at ourselves to play the game.

“And I think the main target now is to recover really well after the game on Thursday, to be good again on Sunday, to make the difference against them and to play our football.”

After facing Hibernian at Ibrox last Sunday at noon, Clement’s side have to prepare for an 8pm kick-off this weekend.

The Belgian boss hopes to see the benefits of extra rest time as he looks for his side to respond to their Lyon loss, which came after an impressive 2-0 away win against Malmo in Sweden last week.

The defeat against the lively French side also came after four straight domestic wins and four clean sheets.

He said: “It’s a big difference, of course, when you play eight o’clock in the evening, or you play like last time, 12 o’clock, so it’s a little bit more recovery time for the players.

“So I expect to see that on the pitch.

“Yes, that’s always the goal (clean sheet). And also in Europe, of course, because then you’re sure of a point, and we did, in that way, a really good job in Malmo with defending well and blocking shots.

“But the Lyon players are a little bit faster than the Malmo players, so we need to raise our level again.

“And we need to do that and use those qualities also in our league games, to take our level from Europe into the league games and win the games.

“So it’s about raising the standards week by week, and being ambitious as the group, with everybody.”