Philippe Clement believes that the additional rest period will benefit his Rangers squad ahead of their match against St Johnstone.
The Scottish Premiership clash is set to kick off at 8pm on Sunday, a shift prompted by the Great Scottish Run event occurring in Glasgow.
Rather than viewing this change as a disadvantage, the Rangers manager is optimistic that the extra recovery time following Thursday's challenging UEFA Europa League defeat to Lyon can prove advantageous for his players.
“It’s a big difference, of course, when you play eight o'clock in the evening or like we did last time, 12 o’clock," he told Sky Sports.
"It’s a little bit more recovery time for the players, so I expect to see that on the pitch.”
Read more:
- Rangers v Hibs penalty decision was correct, says KMI panel
- Clement confident Europa League defeat can make Rangers 'stronger'
It's not just more energy the Rangers boss wants displayed out on the Ibrox pitch, he's hoping his side can continue their run of three consecutive clean sheets in the league, which have all helped to gain crucial victories.
"It's always the goal," Clement continued. "Also in Europe of course because then you are sure of a point already. We did a really good job of that in Malmo (2-0 win), we defended well and blocked shots.
"But against Lyon their players were a little bit faster than the normal players, so we need to raise our level in that way again, and we need to do that and use those qualities in our league games.
"We need to take our level from Europe into the league games. It's about raising the standards week by week and being ambitious in that way."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel