Philippe Clement is right to manage James Tavernier and his decision could well see the Rangers captain come back even stronger.
A lot has been made of the manager’s call to leave his skipper out of the starting XI for the Europa League draw away in Olympiacos. I thought Clement spoke well about the situation after the game. Tavernier is used to battering out 60-odd games a season, but he is getting older and you can’t keep going on like that forever.
It might just be a case that Tavernier is feeling a bit of tiredness just now and the manager decided to freshen things up in Greece. The changes worked, there’s no doubt about that. I thought Dujon Sterling did well at right back and then came off just after 50 minutes and Neraysho Kasanwirjo replaced him. Tavernier, obviously, made a late appearance.
But listen, that’s what you have to do when you’re playing three games a week, sometimes you have to make changes. I know from experience that when you get to that 33 plus age how hard it is to try and play three games a week. I was allowed by the managers to manage myself, in terms of when I wouldn’t train as much. I’d be playing three games in a week when I was at Birmingham.
I would maybe just do a day in the gym, where I would just go on the bike. I would kind of manage myself so I was available to try and reserve as much energy as possible. As you get older, your body’s not the same, everybody knows that. That might just be a case that Tav’s maybe feeling it a wee touch just now. I don’t know but maybe giving him that wee bit of respite and sitting on the bench, watching his teammates, you might see Tav come back stronger and better again.
Certainly as you get older, your body certainly changes. I know that the last three or four years of my career. I felt big changes in my body. I looked after myself as well as I could. I would listen to the nutritionists and I would do everything I possibly could to get the maximum out of my body.
But you’re not a robot, you’re human and your body starts to feel stuff that you wouldn’t have felt five or six years previous to that. So maybe it’s just a case of the manager looking after Tavernier and we’ll see what happens going forward. I still think he’s got a part to play. I’ve always said and people have come at me regarding Tavernier but I’ve always stuck behind him.
I think he’s been a really good servant for Rangers. His numbers don’t lie. I think going forward, he’s excellent. Maybe pushing him one forward might be a great idea going into games, looking into the future. Who knows? He could certainly play there, I’ve no doubt about that. It might be something going forward, if you want to be really strong defensively.
If you were to ask Tavernier himself personally, he would probably say the defensive side of his game could be better.
But going forward, I don’t think there’s many better. His stats don’t lie, and I don’t care if people say half his goals or whatever from penalty kicks. It takes a bit of bottle to step up and take a penalty kick.
Bottle is something I think the Rangers team showed in abundance in Greece. If you were to say to me four games in, that Rangers would be sitting on seven points, I would have taken that all day long. A point away from home is good against Olympiacos, who won the Conference League last year.
I know they’ve lost a few players but they’re still a good outfit, so that point away from home last night is a brilliant one. I know how hard it is to get points on the road. When we went a goal down, that’s when I kind of thought to myself, right, show me a bit of metal and the team did exactly that.
I thought Connor Barron and Nicolas Raskin were excellent in the middle of the park. When your opponent has the ball you need to be aggressive towards them. Both of them now, in my opinion, over the last couple of weeks are starting to strike up a decent relationship in the middle of the pitch.
Rangers’ entire performance against Olympiacos was full of character, bite, aggressiveness and that’s what I want to see going forward, starting on Sunday against Hearts. I want to see that in every single game. Now I know you can never play at your best level all the time, I understand that. I’ve played long enough, but I need to see that passion, that character, that bite in the team
If Rangers do that and take it into Sunday and going forward domestically, well, they’ll have a better chance of winning games. It’s nine points at this stage in the season behind Celtic and Aberdeen in the Premiership. That is nowhere near good enough.
The players need to realise that, I’m sure they are realising it, because obviously what’s been going on in the last couple of weeks, there’s been a lot of criticism flying all over the place. The only way to answer that at Rangers is by winning games.