This Rangers team lacks quality in the final third ... Clement is toast if he can't fix that

THEY didn’t lose the midfield battle this time. They were clearly the better team on the day. But when working with a squad of players that offers such an atrocious lack of quality and composure in the final third of the field when the heat is really on, Rangers manager Philippe Clement is never going to get anywhere.

If he’s looking to take any positives from the highly-precarious position of having failed to beat Celtic for the fourth time in his Ibrox career in the Scottish Cup final, it is that he’s not the only manager in the Old Firm bubble having to rebuild his side.

Celtic under Brendan Rodgers have not been good this season. They got away with it in the league because a wobbly Rangers buckled at key moments. And yesterday, with all eyes on them at Hampden, having needed a penalty shoot-out win over Aberdeen to get there, they failed to show up against an Ibrox side running on fumes and running out of fit players in certain positions.

Rodgers, considering he is likely to lose Matt O’Riley and must replace the retiring Joe Hart, needs at least half-a-dozen new faces to go into that starting XI. A total of 12 guys were signed by the champions over last summer and January — and not one of them made the team yesterday. Domestic double or not, that is dysfunctional stuff.

They looked like a team in desperate need of freshening up yesterday. When the hangovers have eased this morning and the green-and-white confetti has been shaken out of the underpants, can any Celtic fan really say that this is a squad of players adequately equipped to make any kind of impression in European competition next season? If they do feel capable of making that kind of prediction, their idea of getting over the morning after the night before must involve sniffing glue.

It is possible to see where Clement is coming from when he talks down the idea of a sizeable gap existing between Rangers and Celtic. However, the time for talking from the Belgian is over. He needs to start backing up his words with affirmative actions.

What happens next season will take care of itself. He is under major scrutiny going into the first Old Firm match of next term at Parkhead — because no one, by that stage, will recall or care how his team had the cup final for the taking and let it slip — and has to find new solutions in the forward areas of the team or he is toast.

That’s the big task in his in-tray right now. And along with sporting director Nils Koppen, he will have to work the market — on whatever budget he has available — like it has never been worked before. Particularly when his defence needs revamped too.

Too often yesterday, Rangers got themselves into decent situations and just didn’t get a shot off. Didn’t ask enough questions. Didn’t take advantage.

Clement has to take part of the blame for this. It was evident he needed a goalscorer during the January window. He ended up plumping for Fabio Silva on loan from Wolves, who turned up at the mid-season training camp in La Manga, stating that he didn’t see himself as a No 9 and didn’t like to worry himself about scoring.

It sure looked that way when he wriggled clear of Alistair Johnston on the left flank 18 minutes in. He had a clear shot at goal, but his sidefooted effort was weak and easily dealt with by Hart, given a much smoother ride into retirement than he should have been. Silva is too expensive to keep. And not worth keeping. Many will point to the injured Danilo being ready to return next term — the centre-forward resplendent in club suit and tie in the main stand yesterday — but did he really set the heather on fire when he was fit? Almost certainly not.

The bloke who stepped into the breach after his knee injury, Cyriel Dessers, has surely shown enough to make it clear by now that he cannot be trusted up front. Maybe he will go away and do well somewhere else, somewhere less pressurised, like Sam Lammers at Utrecht.

You can say what you want about him scoring 22 goals this season, the Nigerian internationalist is never, ever going to be the answer for Rangers as a centre-forward. His ability to get himself into positions is forever put forward as a positive, but that can only hold so much water when he makes such a Horlicks of it in the split-second moments that tend to decide bigger games.

He had three chances within a nine-minute spell in the first half. Not sitters. Not the kind of one-on-one he fouled up at Celtic Park earlier in the season. But chances all the same. The standard of his efforts just illuminated all his flaws.

Sixteen minutes in, Todd Cantwell plays him through on the right of the area. There’s a chance of a first-time shot across the keeper. He tries it, sclaffs it hopelessly into a ruck of players and the ball eventually comes back to Cantwell, who chips it over.

Cantwell then puts a ball in from the right. It’s travelling about knee-height when it makes its way to Dessers in front of goal. He’s under pressure from an opponent, for sure, but the chance to make contact is there. He ends up delivering a fresh-air swipe.

Then, midway through the opening period, James Tavernier, who did little to silence those believing his own time in Glasgow is up, connects with Cantwell, the ball is fed inside to Dessers and he sclaffs it again, sending it bobbling into traffic once more.

He was no loss when he went off at the break. Abdallah Sima was tried through the middle in the second half and has been good when fit, but what will Brighton want to make that deal permanent? And how will that fit into the overall budget for a playing department, despite huge wages being paid, that needs torn up.

Sima did, of course, get the ball in the net, but, despite Clement’s protestations, it was rightly ruled out.

Nicolas Raskin did foul Hart when going in for the corner that fell to Sima. It’s that simple.

Cantwell showed a desire to get on the ball and make things happen yesterday, but he was taken off eventually and just doesn’t look forceful enough to be the main playmaker. He should be sold. Try as he did to change things yesterday, he remains better known for his what he taps out on his phone rather than what he trots out on the pitch.

That Scott Wright is still at the club and playing in finals is a miracle. Dujon Sterling is a midfielder or a right-back, but not a right winger. And perhaps one of the most alarming remarks made by Clement post-match, when admitting that his side does have to become more clinical, is that a fit Rabbi Matondo would have finished some of the chances Rangers created.

Rabbi Matondo? He’s been two years at the club now. His highlights reel is about the same length as Rishi Sunak’s Greatest Hits compilation from the current election campaign. Short. And not terribly sweet.

Rangers were summed up with four minutes to play here with the scoreline goalless and momentum in their favour. They broke forward with Raskin, had Celtic stretched with players advancing on each flank, but no one really made the run for the Belgian, he didn’t know what to do and the move just fizzled out. A great position that came to nothing.

And before you know it, the ball’s in the net thanks to Celtic substitute Adam Idah up the other end and it’s over. Those are the margins. You need matchwinners. You need predators. You need people who can deliver from just one big chance on the biggest stages.

Rodgers brought in a scorer, a goals man, in Idah in January to bolster his options. Clement went for Silva.

That, as it turns out, made the difference in the end. And it has left the Rangers manager with absolutely no room for error going forward into next season. He’s under serious, serious pressure.