PHILIPPE Clement has predicted that Dujon Sterling will choose his words more wisely in future and admitted that former Celtic player Virgil van Dijk would not have lacerated his own team the way the Rangers utility man did after the draw with Dundee.

A clearly emotional Sterling was scathing about how the Ibrox club had performed in the immediate aftermath of their rearranged cinch Premiership match at Dens Park on Wednesday night.

The former Chelsea player described his side’s displays in their last two outings as “s***” and stated that it had looked as though they had nothing to play for in “dead rubber” fixtures.

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Clement could understand why the summer signing was so upset after a result which left Rangers three points behind their city rivals Celtic at the top of the Premiership table with five league games to play.

He pointed out that an established footballer like Liverpool and Netherlands centre half Van Dijk would not use the same sort of language if he was interviewed following a negative result.

But the Belgian, whose team take on Hearts in the Scottish Gas Scottish Cup semi-final at Hampden tomorrow, is sure the man who was named Viaplay Cup final Man of the Match back in December will not be so rash going forward and will continue to perform well on the park. 

Glasgow Times: “It's words of a player who's disappointed because we lost points who maybe lacks a little bit of experience in that way,” he said. “If I see Virgil van Dijk giving a press interview yesterday after the game (Liverpool lost 3-1 on aggregate to Atalanta on Thursday night to exit the Europa League), it's totally different and that's the way it should be.

“Those are things for young players to learn and to become better. It's more talking out of frustration, but I know we can count on Dujon on the field with what he's done in the last couple of months, the moments he was fit. That's not been the case enough for me. We will work with him on that."

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Clement’s remarks after the Dundee draw – the former Genk, Club Brugge and Monaco manager stated that his players had reacted positively to their Ross County defeat three days earlier – did not go down well with many Rangers fans.

However, he stood by his comments yesterday. “It was more positive, for sure,” he said. “There were a lot of elements that were much better. You need to also give credit to Dundee with the way they defended. They kept on defending and they kept on running back with a lot of numbers.

“Dundee is normally a team that gets a lot of chances and a lot of shots on target. They didn't manage to do that in this game so that proves we did something right. But we didn't get the result and we could've done several things better so we're going to work on that to get better.”