THERE’S nothing exciting about being a Rangers fan right now.
If Jermain Defoe genuinely believes otherwise, then he’s playing for the wrong club
It’s excruciating. It’s exasperating.
But it’s definitely not exciting.
I’m sorry, but after being knocked out of two cup competitions by Aberdeen in Glasgow it’s just totally unacceptable.
Whenever people compare
Rangers to
Celtic they mention the gulf in finances.
But that’s the same with
Aberdeen and Rangers and yet you wouldn’t know it looking at results and performances between the pair this season.
Defoe probably thought he was saying what fans wanted to hear.
Trust me, it wasn’t.
This isn’t Bournemouth, West Ham, Portsmouth or even Tottenham he’s playing for now. It’s Rangers, where these sorts of results are just not on.
Don’t get me wrong, Derek McInnes’ side were well worth their win at Ibrox and are in the Scottish Cup semi-final on merit.
They earned the right to have a crack at Celtic next. But for me it only showed up the glaring failings at my old club right now — with far too many people taking more than they’re giving.
Steven Gerrard will be the first to admit that he’s made mistakes, but he isn’t the man to blame.
I’d be more inclined to look at the job being done by the club’s Head of Recruitment.
Mark Allen is quick enough to jump around changing rooms when the team wins, but what has he actually contributed?
He paints himself as the mastermind in everything that’s good when Rangers are winning, but he doesn’t fool me.
For a start, why are there four left-wingers at the club in Glenn Middleton, Ryan Kent, Jamie Murphy and Eros Grezda?
Jordan Jones is another one on the way with Jake Hastie expected to follow
That just doesn’t make any sense to me.
It’s the same with seven central midfielders — Steven Davis, Ryan Jack, Scott Arfield, Ross McCrorie, Graham Dorrans, Andy Halliday and Glen Kamara. Yet there’s only Daniel Candeias who can play wide right.
That’s a total imbalance and stops Gerrard from being able to make changes when things aren’t going well. Look at the Pittodrie Cup clash when he didn’t make a single
substitution. That tells you everything about how the squad is all wrong.
I also look at the left-back, Borna Barisic, and see a player who doesn’t want to be at Rangers.
Every time I see him he just goes through the motions and I don’t get it. Whenever the going gets tough he seems to be injured
The best left-back in the building is Lee Wallace and yet he can’t even get into any of the squads with midfielder Halliday the second choice.
That whole episode just stinks.
Then there’s the decision to hand Alfredo Morelos a new contract when he was already tied down for another couple of seasons.
It just struck me as a massive waste of money, handing him a bigger deal. Morelos should be giving Rangers more, not the other way around.
But it’s like Gers still have the mindset that the only way to solve their problems is by throwing money at any situations that crop up.
Some people say that’s the answer now with the team but that’s too easy and simple
Gerrard isn’t totally blameless in all this, by the way. I’m sure he’d say himself there are things he wishes he’d done differently.
I also think he’s getting cut some slack simply because of who he is.
The supporters aren’t giving him a hard time and that’s down to his reputation in the game as a player.
They weren’t so slow to have a go at Mark Warburton or Pedro Caixinha, were they? Graeme Murty got absolutely filleted by some.
Gerrard’s getting away with it right now because of his name, but that won’t last forever and he’ll know that.
He says all the right things when the team loses but there’s only so many times he can repeat himself.
That said, I just think the players need to stand up and be counted.
Some of them have worked for four managers now, so what does that say about them as individuals?
It must have been alarming for Gerrard on Tuesday night given just how easily his team was beaten.
We can all lose games of football but there’s a way to lose. He must be asking himself what he needs to do to motivate these players for 90 minutes.
Some people will blame him for that but for me it boils down to each player individually.
I wouldn’t criticise Gerrard for bringing in Defoe and Davis because, on paper, they should have been good additions.
It’s surprised most people that they’ve not been better. It’s just not worked out.
But they’ve at least had great careers until now, so I’d be more critical of the ones around them who don’t seem to have the hunger to be successful.
You just never see Rangers winning ugly these days.
During the nine in a row era — and during my time there under Walter Smith — it wasn’t always open, expansive football. The performances were often ordinary.
8-0 victory
But those teams still knew how to grind out wins and that’s a trait this current team just doesn’t seem to have.
Put it like this, had our team drawn with Aberdeen at Pittodrie there was no way in this world we would have lost a replay at Ibrox.
Aberdeen wouldn’t have got two cracks at beating us.
But Rangers right now are a team who are beatable — and that must be extremely worrying for Gerrard.
Listen, they’ll finish second in the league, that’s a given. They might not be able to catch Celtic but equally they’re not going to be caught by the Dons or ourselves at Kilmarnock.
In the remaining games, though, their players are playing for their futures[/QUOTE
Cant see anything wrong with this