Philippe Clement insists Rangers will have no excuses during their Ibrox exile as he addressed the switch to Hampden for the first time this term.

The Rangers Review revealed on Wednesday night that Clement’s side are set to take to the field at the National Stadium during the opening weeks of the campaign. A deal to secure the use of Hampden is close to being signed after chairman John Bennett and his board were left counting the cost of significant delays to ongoing redevelopment work in the Copland Stand.

Rangers confirmed last month that Ibrox will be out of commission at the start of the season and Clement’s side now face the prospect of losing their advantage in the Premiership fixtures with Motherwell and Ross County and upcoming Champions League qualifiers. The Belgian held his maiden media briefing of the new term at a training camp in Holland on Thursday and will not allow the farce to derail his ambitions for a fast start to the season.

Philippe Clement during a game at Ibrox (Image: SNS)

“Of course, at the first moment you are surprised about that and it is not the ideal situation,” Clement says. “But that’s our life. You always need to adapt, there is no use having bad thoughts or keep thinking about things you cannot change.

“It’s something everyone is working hard on to get us back to Ibrox as quickly as possible. It’s a thing the club did for our disabled fans and our other fans to make things better in the stadium. With the shipment? You don’t have control of that and I don’t have the precise details.

“It’s not important. What’s important is when we are back there. It’s not totally clear yet but we are getting towards a solution and that is the most important thing.

“If you live looking for excuses you will never get success. It’s easy in life to find excuses when you’re not successful. That’s the easiest thing. To have success, along the way there are difficulties and there are problems.

“There are situations where you think, ‘What is this?’ Part of life is to solve problems. People only see success at the end, they don’t see the path. And the path always has obstacles. We need to take it like that and make the best out of it.”

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Rangers also held talks over a potential move to Murrayfield, while the option of playing at a three-sided Ibrox was briefly on the table. Fears over the condition of the Hampden surface have been allayed in recent days and Clement is more concerned with the impact that the inconvenience will have on the supporters.

“We also think about the fans and we try to find solutions that make the least inconvenience for them,” Clement says. “That’s a priority. We could have played in a big stadium in England, but then it’s really difficult for the fans to get there.

“We want them to be there, they are super important for us. We talked about the pitch, but the fans are the priority.

“We need to have certain guarantees around the pitch, if not we need a back-up plan if it’s not good enough. You need a good pitch to play football.”