3 New Year’s resolutions Rangers should strive to achieve in 2024

For Rangers fans, 2024 can’t come quick enough. Bar the very last month, 2023 has zero viable reasons for future Rangers generations to reminisce over. There’s no two ways about it, just one domestic trophy win from a possible four was never going to be good enough. Ultimately that led to the sacking of Michael Beale, who failed to get the best out of his recruitment and led the team to just one victory over Celtic – and that contest at Ibrox had very little if anything riding on it. Our loyal support base deserves way better. But for once, we have real reasons to be confident for the dawn of a new year under our new leader Philippe Clement. The Belgian has a proper aura about him that hasn’t been the case with our managers since Steven Gerrard was in Govan. Rangers remain unbeaten under Clement – who is still on course to at least equal a record set by William Wilton 123 years ago – and with one trophy in the bag already, there’s no reason why he can’t complete a full domestic sweep and get us far into the Europa League. Sure, we can’t get too ahead of ourselves but there are grounds to dream. So what can Rangers do better at this year? Plenty, we hear you say. But let’s whittle it down to three main resolutions for the new year. Rangers must now topple Celtic in Scottish Premiership

Danilo during Rangers FC v Celtic FC – Cinch Scottish Premiership Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images The Viaplay Cup success against Aberdeen was Rangers’ first in 12 years, far too long a wait to get our hands on that piece of silverware. And in a similar vein, it feels like an age since we had a real stranglehold of the game in Scotland. Celtic have agonisingly been top dogs since 55 as we failed to capitalise on that particular success in 2021. There is no hiding the fact that for one, Ange Postecoglou was a terrific manager and two, Giovanni van Bronckhorst or Michael Beale were not the men to topple him. Of course, Brendan Rodgers is back and Celtic are flailing. Now is our time under Clement to take advantage and set the standards in the league for years to come. The Belgian feels like the man who really can achieve that for the club and following up on the Viaplay Cup win with a league title in the bag will hopefully signal a new era of Rangers dominance. Get best out of Nils Koppen skillset Rangers finally put an end to the search for a new director of football when the club welcomed Nils Koppen to Ibrox at the start of December. Rangers saw his predecessor Ross Wilson leave for Nottingham Forest in April and it meant Michael Beale was tasked with leading the recruitment front in the summer. In fairness, Beale brought in a number of good players. But the Englishman wasn’t good enough as a manager to discover their potential and maximise it, which was given harsher scrutiny given the money he spent. Clement seems to be doing that now and even if a director of football wasn’t in place to work alongside the Belgian for the January transfer window, you’d still place trust in Clement bringing in the required talent to strengthen our ranks. But he won’t have to fly solo as Koppen, previously of PSV Eindhoven, is in the building. He’ll have a big say on transfers, contract renewals and building on the player trading model that worked to an extent under Wilson. Giving Koppen the tools he needs to work on those objectives with Clement is vital for Rangers’ success on and off the pitch this year. Rangers must drastically improve in Champions League

Champions League ball before Rangers FC v Liverpool FC: Group A – UEFA Champions League Photo by Joe Prior/Visionhaus via Getty Images Rangers are not there yet but if we want to achieve resolution number one in this piece, then improving our fortunes in the Champions League has to be a long-term objective. The club knows its way around the Europa League having reached the last 16 in the competition in every season bar one since 2019/20. The one exception was when we ventured into the Champions League for the first time in more than a decade – and it’s safe to say Rangers were underprepared. Giovanni van Bronckhorst led us to a fourth-placed Group A finish, losing every game and conceding 22 goals in the process. Granted, it was an extremely tough group up against Liverpool, Napoli and Ajax but there’s not getting away from how desperately painful it was to watch. It’s something Clement and the board need to address in 2024/25 if we qualify automatically for the unprecedented new league format. The Ibrox hierarchy must provide Clement with the resources to build a squad that can deal with the quality of opposition in the Champions League. Look at Copenhagen this year, who we face in a friendly on January 16 amid the Premiership winter break. They are a club with far less financial resourcing than Rangers and yet managed to finish second in their group ahead of Manchester United and Galatasaray. The Danes have proven that the underdogs still have roles to play in the Champions League and Rangers under Clement must strive to be like that.

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