News: Dujon Sterling Unveils Philippe Clement’s Words That Altered His Rangers…
The player arrived in the summer but missed most action under Michael Beale
Dujon Sterling has revealed the conversation he held with manager Philippe Clement which turned his Rangers career around.
The versatile player had been sitting on the sidelines for the majority of his time under Michael Beale before the Englishman was sacked and replaced by the former Club Brugge and Monaco gaffer. Clement seemingly took an immediate shine to the 24-year-old and Sterling still recalls what he said to him to boost his confidence enough to see him play 15 times under the Belgian in just a few short months compared to the seven appearances he’d made previously.
“This gaffer has come in and saw what I was doing every day on the training pitch and said to me, ‘I don’t understand why you aren’t playing’,” Sterling revealed.
“He had the confidence and the belief in me to play me. I’ve got to thank him. That just shows you how quickly football can change. You just have to keep working every day as I was doing.”
Injury and illness has kept Sterling back throughout his career and another issue arose earlier this term.
And while it’s fully over with now, the defensive star explains how even doctors could not diagnose it.
“Back at the start of November, I woke up one day and had a couple of black lines in my eye (line). I think the term they use is floaters. I had that and it was still giving me issues for a couple of weeks. It was blurry at the top of my eye so I couldn’t really see anything on my right side. I said to the gaffer that I wanted to play. But say, for example, it was 0-0, and in the last minute, a ball comes over and I can’t see it.
“I didn’t want to affect the team by playing when I knew I wasn’t 100 per cent right. He said that’s fine and to take as much time as I needed to get it sorted and that they’d fully support me.
“I saw a couple of specialists. They helped but it just went away by itself. I think it was only after the Viaplay Cup Final that it fully disappeared. Even in the cup final, I still had a tiny bit of it in the top corner. But now it’s completely gone.”
What could docs tell him? “Literally nothing. They just couldn’t say. Even now I don’t know. I’ll have another check-up in a couple of weeks. It’s just a time thing. There was nothing to take. They said they could do laser, but that might affect me when I was older, so I decided just to wait.”