Philippe Clement blasted the state of the Dens Park pitch and the process that saw Rangers’ Premiership fixture with Dundee postponed just 90 minutes before kick-off.

The match was called off after heavy rain left the pitch unplayable in parts. Referee Don Robertson made the decision on his arrival at the stadium after an initial inspection at 9:15am by local whistler Craig Fordyce.

The call-off denied Rangers the chance to regain top spot in the Premiership heading into the international break after Celtic moved clear with victory over St Johnstone on Saturday. Rangers are next in league action when Hibernian make the trip to Ibrox on Saturday, March 30.

And Clement was less than impressed with the way a shambolic series of events unfolded as Rangers discovered the match was postponed just minutes from their arrival at the stadium.

Clement said: “We weren’t warned about it - not Saturday evening, during the night. I hear now that people started to work on the pitch at five o’clock in the morning. So, in that way they did their best.

“But we were only told there was an issue because our kitman was at the stadium early, at around 9.15am. He warned us about the situation and for me that’s a really strange thing.

“This will be the only pitch in all the leagues in Scotland where a game was postponed. That tells me that it has nothing to do with the weather. Yes, it rained, but it rained all over Scotland and there were pitches in other lower leagues where they could play football.

“There, the ball was bouncing. But here, the ball was not bouncing. So clearly there is something wrong. It is clearly in the rules that if the ball doesn’t bounce you cannot play a game of football. Also, there were spots on the pitch where they put lots of sand and there was no stability for the players.

“It is really dangerous for injuries. We can say, yes, 50 years ago or 60 years ago football was played on these kind of pitches. And that’s true. But there has been an evolution as in those times they also played the game with laces in the football.

“I think it’s a very important thing for the future that a league thinks about how to raise the level of the pitches and put standards on that like they do on other things. They have standards with things like lighting, for example, to have a good broadcast of the game and to have a good product.

“Sure, the lights are really important. But even more important is the quality of the pitches, I think.”

Rangers would have been without a handful of first team stars for the Premiership fixture as Clement continues to deal with the Ibrox injury crisis. But the Belgian insists that situation never entered his mind as he came to terms with a wasted weekend.

“[There are] only negatives today,” Clement said. “We were ready for this game and have very important weeks to come to play final games before the top six. It’s going to be difficult now to put this game in between. And it’s a disadvantage if you have a midweek game and the other team has one week of preparation.

“So I don’t see any positives from this. We have internationals going away now and we cannot train today. Normally I always find something positive in every situation but today I cannot stay anything positive.”