It’s not always been straightforward or easy since Philippe Clement first walked through the Ibrox front doors last October, but he’s more committed than ever to delivering success at Rangers.

The Belgian, speaking in Sweden ahead of his side’s trip to face Malmo at the start of their Europa League campaign, has been linked with a move back to his homeland in recent days. Reports have suggested that Anderlecht want to bring the former Genk and Club Brugge title-winner to the Pro League.

Clement has been forced to work with a limited budget, changing executive team and even away from Ibrox at the start of this season. As he previewed the start of Rangers’ latest tilt in European competition however Clement, who recently signed a four-year deal at the club, reiterated he’s in it for the long haul in Glasgow - regardless of who comes calling.

“I want to speak about that. It's really clear, I engaged myself long-term for Rangers last month, so whoever comes, whatever team comes, I'm not going to go away,” he said.

Read more:

“I’m really clear. I want this project with the club to make it really successful in the future, and we all know we need time for that, we need a few transfer windows for that, and we need a lot of work to do for that, and that's what I want to do.

“Because I love the city, I love the club, I love the dynamic at Ibrox with the fans, so I'm here to stay.”

John Gilligan was appointed interim Rangers chairman earlier this month after John Bennett was forced to stand down from the post due to health reasons. Gilligan confirmed earlier this week that Clement would be backed in January financially as a squad rebuild and restructure that began this summer continues.

“It’s important and it's necessary. It was not easy in the summer, we talked about that, maybe the people in the club will talk about that later on, in the next couple of months also, about that situation,” he continued on the news that there will be money to spend.

“Of course, as a manager you hope to get more funds in to do the right thing for the club, but with the resources that were there, I think everybody is starting to see that a lot of good things have been made. And it's now interesting to work with that and to focus on that. And then, of course, to plan towards January, what we are doing already, and to plan towards next summer.

“We're also busy with that, but that's our job and with recruitment to do. It's important to have also money to do the right things for the club.”

Asked whether it was a relief to have a board member speaking publicly to take the entire focus off of Clement’s communication, especially regarding off-field matters, the manager added: “I don't really need that, but, of course, as a manager you want to talk about football and about the things you are doing. And we had too many talks in the last couple of months about non-football things, where I didn't have any single influence or any single say.

“So I hope we can stop this spirit also, and nobody needs to talk about those things anymore in the future; that we can focus on football because that's the most important thing for the club.”

The Ibrox side’s trip to face Malmo is their third meeting with the side in 13 years - with the Swedish champions coming out on top on the previous two occasions.

“It’s a very interesting game. I saw the stats from Rangers in the last couple of years against Malmo, and they are not really good. We have a fight with history in that way. It's interesting to do that.

“The team is very motivated to show a good face, and to grow again, like they've been growing the last couple of weeks, to make the next step. We need to find some solutions, of course, because of the suspension of Jefte, and also because Ridvan Yilmaz is not available yet, so that will change some things that we didn't have much time to train on, but that we did the last couple of days.

“It's about going full in this game against a good opponent, a very good opponent who plays good offensive football, who are top of the league, who have a lot of experience in Europe with a lot of players, so everybody's excited to play this game.”

The new Europa League format sees each team play eight games as opposed to six, with an overall group table taking the place of previous individual groups.

Clement admits that Rangers didn’t get any “presents” in the draw and defended his side’s efforts last season in the competition when they finished top of their group and were only knocked out narrowly by Benfica.

“It's going to be interesting to see. I think with the draw we didn't get any presence, that's really clear if you compare it with other groups,” he added.

“So we have a really, really tough group to qualify out of, so that's a little bit the strange thing also about that, you have teams in your group who play against other teams than you are playing against, so in that way it's a little bit of a weird situation. But we're going to just focus on ourselves, game by game, going full to take the three points, and then see what this format brings.

“It will be a challenge to do better than last season, but we are ambitious, we always want to do better than we did before. Every month we want to do better, and that's the exciting thing about the project now.”