Philippe Clement is Rangers mirror image of Ange and he's already answered a massive burning question - Hugh Keevins

You could hardly call four games a body of work but Philippe Clement, based on the evidence gathered so far, could be Rangers’ Ange Postecoglou.

Ange took six games to work out Scottish football when he arrived from Japan to manage Celtic – then he dominated our game until he left for Spurs. Clement has yet to lose a match and has started to get a tune out of players who were only capable of one bum note after another under his predecessor Michael Beale.

Every time Clement speaks he makes Beale sound like a bigger, even more regrettable, error of judgment by those who hired him. Asked last week if he could offer an opinion on Rangers’ chronic injury list, the Belgian said he could but his answer would not be for “you guys”. In other words, a media black-out to prevent defamatory material becoming public.

Questioned if he was surprised by the fitness level of the players he inherited from Beale, he replied: “Next question please.” That will be a resounding “Yes” then for the benefit of the hard of understanding. Rangers’ tilt at the title is no longer being contested by an assortment of multi-million pound misfits. I’ve always laughed at the xenophobic attitude of the fans in this country who look at a foreign player when he arrives here from somewhere more exotic and question his credentials with a sneering remark.

“Aye but can he do it on a wet midweek night in Dundee?” is the challenge. Clement’s side provided an emphatically positive answer to that one while scoring five goals at Dens Park in midweek. The manager speaks about his introductory phase at Ibrox as being an “observation period”. Last Sunday’s league win over Hearts was a “reference game”.

Sunday's Viaplay Cup semi-final with Hearts at Hampden might be