Philippe Clement insists Rangers rhythm disrupted by fans pyro show but salutes response in five star Dundee display

Philippe Clement insists Rangers’ fans pyro show disrupted their rhythm on a stop-start night at Dens Park but saluted his side for their five-star show that maintained his perfect Premiership start to life at Ibrox.

The Belgian was delighted with his side’s display against Dundee with five different scorers all on target to send the Light Blues into Sunday’s Viaplay Cup semi-final against Hearts on a high. But it was a night of high drama on Tayside with kick off delayed for 45 minutes due to the Rangers team bus being stuck in traffic and then when the match eventually did get underway Kevin Clancy was forced to halt it after just a couple of minutes due to pyro in the away end which caused a fire alarm to go off.

Clement didn’t use either as an excuse but admitted his own support didn’t help on a night when Ryan Jack, Danilo, Cyriel Dessers, Sam Hammers and James Tavernier, for the penalty spot, all scored. He said: “The delay at the start wasn't an excuse. We need to be ready for every situation. It wasn’t ideal to arrive so late and then go inside again after a few minutes but that’s never an excuse. It’s not a good thing that we need to step inside as it broke our rhythm. I’m not the guy who needs to say what fans need to do but those things are better not done because we want to play football and keep our rhythm. We started the game well directly with the pressing of Danilo and almost got a chance so you want to keep it that way.

“If you score five goals and have a lot of other chances and keep a clean sheet - although Jack saved us a few times - then you are really happy after the game. I wasn’t so satisfied after our first half. It was okay. We scored the first goal and didn’t concede anything but weren’t