Andy Halliday has said he has to repay interim manager Graeme Murty’s faith in him for enacting an early recall clause from his loan spell out in Azerbaijan.
The loan spell wasn’t ideal and he got very little game time in reality and the player has admitted himself a week into the spell he knew he’d made a mistake, but with Murty at the helm now he’s determined to take a second shot at having a career at Rangers as he felt that simply wouldn’t have happened under Pedro Caixinha.
Speaking to the Official Site with him now back with the squad and out in Florida, he explained that he wanted to get back to the form levels he showed in 2015/16 as we won the championship. He made 48 appearances that year, scoring ten times.
‘First things first I am just happy to be back and back in amongst the squad. It has been an enjoyable couple of days so far and I just want to look ahead to this week – those are my short term goals. I am just happy to be back playing for Rangers and if I can find my way back into the team. It is all up to me, it is important I train well, get fit and see where we go from there.’
Halliday went on to say that he’d been in pretty regular contact with Murty over his loan spell and he knows he has to repay his faith in him now.
‘I have spoken to him quite a bit, we have always had a great relationship and I have been texting him back and forth and I wished him all the best when he got the interim job and then when he got the job. It his job now and his to keep, it is up to us as players to repay his faith, me especially. I am very thankfully he has given me that opportunity to come back; I owe him at least one hundred percent.’
He went on to add.
‘Under the previous manager there was just no chance, I would never have had a future at Rangers Football Club. I am very thankful and I suppose it is a second chance and it’s a good chance to try and make a name for myself and get the form that I had that I sort of had at the start of my Rangers career. I don`t want to put too much onus on myself but I would like to get into the team, I would like to score goals and I would like us to win games and we`ll see where we go from there.’
He knew part of coming back and impressing was to handle the expectations at the club and rise to them once again.
‘You have to have competition at a club of this stature; I say it every time you need to thrive on the expectations and the pressure of being at this football club. It is unique in terms of you are expected to win every game and I have certainly never had that at any other club. That is the reason you would rather play in front of 50,000 instead of 1500 in Azerbaijan.’
Reflecting on the season so far despite being over 3000 miles away, he ended by saying that it has been frustrating and we have to become far more consistent.
‘The frustrating thing is watching and Rangers just not winning games, it was not too dissimilar to the year before. We have just been too inconsistent; we have had a lot of good performances, a lot of good results but dropped too many points when we shouldn`t have. It was disappointing to sit back and watch that from a supporter`s point of view and I know we keep saying the same thing but we need to be more consistent. We have a chance to do that second-half of this season and if you get wins then the table takes care of itself but until you put a run together you can`t get into any sort of race. When you look at the performance at Parkhead I think it will give a bit of spirit, our top level is high but our bottom level is far too low.’
