Philippe Clement will have been absolutely delighted with the cup semi-final’s outcome. Sure, it wasn’t the best we’ve played, although it’s worth noting we’ve rarely ever played good football under Clement, but it was a winning and fairly comfortable 90 minutes in which Rangers clearly deserved to win.

And all it took was ditching the hapless Connor Goldson, Fabio Silva, and Tom Lawrence.

Clement needed this win, but goodness, had he made these changes earlier, Rangers would still be top of the league.

The performance was more complete than any we’ve seen from Rangers’ side in weeks, with defence robust and a fair old whack of chances created, but the serious regret is Clement didn’t do it sooner and now must reflect on his own error.

This is the frustration – we had 56 in the palm of our hand, but performances and results were floundering – the changes could have been made there and then to refresh and get the wins going again, but Clement remained defiant.

Defiant to the Scott Wrights, Fabio Silvas, Connor Goldsons, Tom Lawrences and other players who just weren’t delivering – he continued to play guys out of position and just refused, for whatever reason, to field optimal XIs.

Now that he has FINALLY conceded and made the needed changes, boy would Clement be foolish to restore anyone.

Silva, Wright, Goldson especially were absolutely not doing it, and while we feel the same about Lundstram at the moment, we can’t see much change while Ridvan is injured.

But the point is Clement got the win he and the fans desperately needed. It was a good win with a great number of players having good matches – Butland, Tavernier, Balogun, Diomande, Dessers in particular – this is what is now needed if Rangers’ are to retain a slim chance of winning 56 this season.

Clement has basically been rotating the wrong players, and now, finally ditching the right ones he gets the right result.

This weekend he’d be such a ridiculous fool to restore the likes of Goldson and Silva to the XI.

He got what needed at the weekend, why throw it away now?