Troy Deeney goes inside Rangers 'shinpads on' mentality as he declares Barry Ferguson took team where Clement couldn’t
Troy Deeney is convinced there's no way Philippe Clement would have pulled of a similar result to Barry Ferguson in Istanbul.
The former Rangers boss was probably kept in the job as long as he was due to his European success. But after being axed and Ferguson tookthe reins, the former Ibrox captain produced a Euro night for the ages by beating Fenerbahce 3-1 in their own backyard to put one foot in the quarter-finals of the Europa League.
And Deeney reckons Ferguson has stripped things back to basics on the training ground, upped the intensity and warned the big egos to get their shinpads on as they're going to get kicked in a bid to not only light a fire under a below par squad, but get them smiling as well. Asked if the result justified Rangers' decision to sack Clement, Deeney was emphatic: "Absolutely. It's a different type of performance. I worked the Man United game and Rangers played well, but Man Utd couldn't have killed them off a little bit earlier.
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"But the intensity that they're working at now is completely different under Ferguson than it is to Clement. You've got people in there that the fanbase can buy into. The players know there's no hiding place, they have to do it.
"He'll have simplified it and try to get them smiling in training again. People don't understand this but what you do on the training pitch, if you're a manager that does shape day in, day out, every footballer hates it.
"But if you let is express ourselves through small sided games, passing drills, possessions and getting after it, we like working hard. But we like working hard with intensity and ferocity as well.
"I imagine he's simplified it. This is what we're going to do, this is what we're going to try and make happen every week. But I tell you what, shinpads on, because you're gonna get kicked today. Take all the ego away and get into it.
"Rangers as a club now, they potentially have new owners coming in. This could be a job Barry Ferguson wants and can grow again with the club. Everything is going in the right direction.
"They've got a week now with no game at the weekend. So all the pressure is on Mourinho. I do think Rangers were excellent, but I would guard against thinking the job is done just because of the volume of shots and chances Fenerbahce had."
Jose Mourinho warned Rangers not to celebrate to hard, and Deeney understands what the Portuguese is getting at. And he pointed to Celtic against Bayern Munich as a warning to Rangers, telling talkSport: "What Mourinho's trying to say is they can't play that bad again. Maybe there was a bit of complacency.
"I did Bayern Munich vs Celtic a couple of weeks back and Bayern were awful. They ended up getting through that Celtic game and I'm thinking 'how can these go on in this competition?' And then you see what they did against Leverkusen.
"Sometimes team overlook - not on purpose - but they think alright, this team shouldn't be able to live with us. I don't want to go away from Rangers being so good and the job that team did getting that result. Every time they counter attacked they looked like they were going to score and they had two goals ruled out for offside.
"But where Mourinho is taking a lot of credit for himself is; 23 shots, seven or target. Jack Butland had an excellent night. So you start to think can he keep all those out again? Souttar the centre half was excellent, he got in the way of everything.
"If I was one of those Fenerbahce players, I'd think that was just one of those night when we just weren't going to score. But if we have one of those games again, I think we score at least three.
