NEW Rangers signing Mohamed Diomande has stressed that he and his Ibrox team mates are not thinking about moving to the top of the cinch Premiership ahead of their match against Ross County on Wednesday night.
Philippe Clement’s team will leapfrog their city rivals Celtic into first place in the top flight table if they win their game in hand against managerless County by three goals in Govan in midweek.
However, Clement has repeatedly stressed that he is not interested in his side’s league position and is only focusing on performances and Diomande has clearly embraced that mantra since moving to Scotland last month.
READ MORE: Philippe Clement's team beat Scott Brown's side to progress
The Ivorian midfielder made his first start for Rangers in their Scottish Cup triumph over Ayr United at Ibrox on Saturday night – a result which keeps alive the Viaplay Cup champions’ hopes of completing a domestic treble this season.
The 22-year-old, a £4.5m capture from Nordsjaelland in Denmark last month, admitted that he had moved to Scotland because he wants to land silverware. However, he stated that he was not looking any further ahead than the County fixture.
“One of the main reasons that I joined the club was because I knew it was a big club and an ambitious club,” he said. “The gaffer and the lads have already done well, winning one trophy.
“But I am not going to talk about anything because I have just joined and I am only focusing on the next game. We can only win trophies if we win our next game so the next game is the most important one for me. We will see what happens in the future.
“Like I said it is just the next game for us. We are going to focus on the training. On Monday we will start gearing up for the game. So, yeah, in our mind is to go and win the game. We don’t care what happens in the table now, our focus is to make ourselves strong and we will see what happens.”
READ MORE: Philippe Clement details talks with Rangers over Willie Collum call
Meanwhile, Diomande has insisted that he will not have any difficulties justifying the substantial outlay which it took to secure his signature and expressed hope he can establish himself as a first team regular at Ibrox with the backing of the Rangers supporters.
“I wouldn’t say this is really a big pressure,” he said. “The fans have been amazing. When I made my debut (in the 2-1 win over Aberdeen last week) and again at the weekend. They make me feel welcome. I hope I can give back to them.
“Yeah, it is a big investment. But I will just look at how I can develop myself and how I can help the team achieve what they want to achieve here. I love it.”
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 here