Rangers all but slim hopes of winning the Scottish Premiership title ended on Sunday after dropping yet more points from a winning position against St Johnstone, with Celtic now 12 points in front – regardless of the game in hand – focus must now turn to the Europa League and more importantly the Scottish Cup for any realistic chance of silverware.
The Gers started, as they have done almost every game in 2020, slowly and without intensity as they gifted the lead to the Saints when Niko Katic failed to deal with a long ball and Callum Hendry opened the scoring.
Rangers struggled to find any fluency in the first-half and Steven Gerrard made a positive change at the break by bringing on Florian Kamberi for Andy Halliday, to say the on-loan Hibs forward had an impact was an understatement.
He scored a spectacular volley to equalise then lost his marker from the touchline to cut inside and square the ball to Joe Aribo to score his second goal in two games to give the Light blues the lead, however, they couldn’t hold on and Katic again was culpable as the Gers failed to deal with a long ball and the resulting corner to allow Stevie May to fire home an equaliser.
What was main cause for the dropped points against St Johnstone?
Formation change at 2-1.
Defensive errors.
Rangers fans took to Twitter at the final whistle furious at yet another game where points have been dropped from a winning position since the winter break with many questioning Gerrard’s perseverance with the same system when it hasn’t been working.
Been struggling to score for almost 2 months…. aye keep the same system
— Callum 🇬🇧 (@CallumDavid15) February 23, 2020
14mins left playing really well with two up top looking like we’d go on and get another goal..Sub Morelos off going back to a 4-3-3 loose a goal and back to clueless rangers..Stevie G just cost us that game in my opinion..Why change a team that’s playing great attacking football?
— Stu (@sturfcno1) February 23, 2020
— Cameron Smith (@CammyS72) February 23, 2020
Need to drop Katic and Morelos. Both have been woeful recently, put in Edmundson and Stewart along with Kamberi and Hagi in the middle. Need a whole formation change
— St. Alex Jones (@St_Alex_Jones) February 23, 2020
Setting up to defend a 1 goal lead even thought the last time we done that we literally lost
— Robbie – Bollingoli (@RobbieGraham72) February 23, 2020
Never in my life have a seen a team change formation and come back and they for a winning position change back and lose 😫😫😫😫😫
— Makey (@makey1976) February 23, 2020
Gerrard has long backed players that are out of form but he now needs to find a way to not only re-discover the Ibrox side’s lost form but also regain the trust of the Rangers fans, starting with the away trip to Braga and – more importantly – the Scottish Cup tie against Hearts at the weekend.