Philippe Clement has vowed to keep Clinton Nsiala’s size 12s on the ground as he aims to help the Rangers prospect take another huge step forward.
The former AC Milan kid made the move to Glasgow in the summer but only got his first taste of professional action when he was thrust into the team for last week’s Dens Park draw. But he’s quickly impressed the Ibrox faithful having kept his place for the wins against St Johnstone and Aberdeen at Ibrox.
He played a key role in Wednesday’s 3-0 triumph over the Dons as he recorded his first clean sheet of his career, while also notching an assist for Leon Balogun’s clincher. The signs are promising but Rangers boss Clement doesn’t want the Frenchman getting carried away. He said: “You can never predict these things, so you see the physical potential, you see the technical potential that we saw from the beginning. You see that in positioning, in making choices, he had to make a lot of steps. So that he was doing the last two months, it was getting better and better.
“But how a player reacts when he gets a chance to play in a full Ibrox for the first time, or to play in Dundee away for the first time with all the pressure on, not to make mistakes because as a centre-back if you make mistakes, you can get goals against. That’s really difficult to predict. So he did that really well.
“Now it’s my task to keep him with two feet on the ground and that he becomes more hungry to get better and better, and not that he comes in a comfort zone now, to be very satisfied with what he performs at home. There was a lot of work to do with Clinton – and there still is.
“He’s a young lad and he will make mistakes along the way, indeed he made really big steps forward. But all credit to him because he’s very focused, he’s hungry to learn.
“All credit also to the staff and his experienced teammates. So in all these trainings the last couple of months, I always put him next to an experienced one who coached him really well.
“So those guys get also credit for the evolution that Clinton is making. That’s the plan that the club had before the season, with the financial situation, to find these kind of talents, so the club did a really good way to do it and the staff did a really good way to work in a good way with him.”