Cyriel Dessers has had a rough season, with possibly the most difficult moments coming in the last few weeks as he watched the Celtic players celebrate their win.
The images burnt into his mind of the scenes of euphoria around one half of Hampden on Saturday and the desolation at the other may still prove useful. Scenes he prayed he’d never see, but had to when they arrived.
As far as consolation goes, it’s scant, but Dessers is at least attempting to salvage something from the way this season ended for the Rangers by using his personal lowlight clip as motivation to return stronger next season.
“It’s been a heavy season, that’s for sure, in all kinds of ways,” Dessers said.
“It’s easy to all go down now in energy and everyone needs to take a rest. But to see them celebrate [on Saturday] and 10 days ago gives me a lot of energy to go again this summer.
“It maybe seems weird to say now, but I cannot wait for pre-season to start again and to do better than this season. I’m looking forward to that.
“We have to turn things over in our favour. We’re on a good path but we’re not there yet. If you look at the balance at the end of the season we showed good things, but we’re not there yet.
“We will go further along that path and I’m sure it will lead us to more trophies next season.”
Dessers understands that Rangers fans have become tired of hearing such claims from their players over the last several seasons, and they are especially tired of hearing how close they are to defeating Celtic rather than seeing the evidence on the pitch.
While the Scottish Cup final loss was Rangers’ fourth defeat in five matches against Celtic this season, it was the closest they had come to getting the monkey off their back.
Dessers was encouraged for the future by the way they competed and even outperformed Celtic for large stretches of the second half, but also frustrated in the present.
“We neutralised them well,” he said.
“We had our moments as well. So as the game went on, in the second half especially, I felt it was growing. I was thinking that this was going to be the day when we turned everything around.
“Everybody is devastated. We were close and we played a good game. It wasn’t an easy game and if you lose it that way in the end then obviously it hurts.
“Even if you look at the five games between the teams this season the gap is not that big. Everybody has seen that. But there is still something about these games. We didn’t win this season any of them.
“But on the other hand, the performance that we had on Saturday and the game plan that we had worked. It was good and that’s something to build on especially in these head-to-head games.”
Dessers and his Rangers teammates will spend the summer licking their wounds. However, there is a good probability that many will not return for another shot at challenging Celtic’s dominance.
The scale of the required rebuild has been downplayed by Ibrox manager Philippe Clement in recent weeks, and fans may be concerned that Rangers’ apparent comfort from their Scottish Cup final performance will lead to the false belief that the wholesale changes many of them seek are not actually required.
The degree of personnel turnover remains to be seen, but nonetheless, Dessers understands that the one thing that must alter is the squad’s mentality. Rangers have fallen short this season not only between the white lines, but also between the ears, which must be rectified.
“I think every summer at a top club is significant,” he said.
“We will need a reset, also mentally, and then get the energy back together. We showed really good things this season and some things to build on that we will take to the next season.
“The basics are there. We just have to build on that and finally make the difference in these head-to-head games. And then I feel that things will go our way as well.”
The rest may have come at a good time for Dessers, who appeared to speak to the press after the game on Saturday with an unwelcome adornment to his cup final suit in the form of a moonboot.
That was the result of a challenge from Celtic defender Cameron Carter-Vickers that forced him from the action at half time, and he is hopeful that fears he may have damaged ankle ligaments prove unfounded.
“I got injured in the first half after around 20 or 25 minutes,” he said.
“I tried to go on because obviously that was the game of the year, the big final at the end of the season and one big push. But I had to come off.
“I’ll get it assessed in the next few days.”
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