Chelsea assistant shrugs off Ibrox defeat

Chelsea’s unbeaten pre-season run may have come to an end against Rangers but assistant manager Steve Clarke insists there is no reason to press the panic button.

Goals from Nacho Novo and Filip Sebo – who netted just twice during his debut season at Rangers last term – secured a 2-0 win for Walter Smith’s men in front of a near-capacity crowd at Ibrox.

Chelsea will now dissect the work-out against Rangers before travelling to Denmark to face Brondby in their final friendly on Tuesday before resuming competitive action when they face Manchester United in the Community Shield on August 5.

“We have to think about the match on Tuesday,” said Clarke.

“We have to go away and assess this game, take what we need to take from it and hopefully win the match on Tuesday and go into the Community Shield in a positive frame of mind.

“From there, we will see what happens. But we will be ready for it.

“There were pleasing aspects of the game against Rangers, although the result was disappointing. As a club we don’t like to lose any match but, at this stage of the season, there are other priorities.

“We don’t select easy games for pre-season. If we want to win 3-0, 4-0, 5-0, we can go to other places and find easy games. The matches we play are difficult matches.

“We played in Feyenoord on Wednesday night, it’s a difficult place to go. Ibrox is a difficult place to play. Now we go to Brondby on Tuesday, another away match and always difficult.

“We are always looking to challenge our players and give them different aspects. Maybe we will come up against Rangers again in the Champions League so now they have a feel of the place and they understand what it’s about.”

Jose Mourinho’s number two was keen to list the positives Chelsea can take from the trip to Glasgow.

Clarke said: “Ashley Cole came back after a long time out. It was a good training session for John Terry, who hasn’t trained for three days with a broken toe, so for him to get 90 minutes at that tempo and that pace was good.

“Claudio Pizarro coming in, he has only trained with the group four times and had another chance to link up with the players and understand what we want from him and how we play. They are all positives.

“I thought Steve Sidwell was the best player today. I thought he was excellent, a good acquisition for us. He strengthens the squad and gives us other options.

“Tal Ben Haim was excellent in the first half. He made a few mistakes towards the end of the game but that’s fatigue. Don’t forget, he played in three positions. He started the game at centre-back, he played left-back and then we moved him to right-back.”

Rangers’ Champions League campaign begins on Tuesday when they host FK Zeta in the first leg of the second qualifying round and Clarke believes the Glasgow club will rise to the challenge against the Montenegrin champions.

“They did well today,” he said. “I think they showed that they are a little more advanced in their pre-season preparations than we are. Obviously they have a big game on Tuesday night and they look sharp, they look ready for it.

“They finished the game a little stronger than us, they caught us a couple of times on the counter-attack and they looked a bit quicker and sharper towards the end. That’s the two various stages of pre-season.

“I thought all round their performance was good. They worked very hard in the first half when we had a lot of possession. Their shape was good.

“They changed their formation a little bit in the second half and brought some good pace into the team and caused us a different problem.

“From that aspect, the fact that they changed systems and we had to change to adapt, it was a good training match.”