Lee McCulloch has said he understands the recent criticism thrown at Rangers following some of our performances, but he doesn’t necessarily accept it.
Speaking to the Official Site following a host of criticism even going as far as saying the players aren’t training enough, McCulloch more than admits that some games haven’t gone how we planned and how we wanted them to, but he puts that down to teams rising to the occasion of playing ‘Rangers’ rather than inherent failings on our side and he also comments that really the standard of quality between League One and the SPL isn’t that big, its mostly about how you approach games and what you give over 90 minutes.
‘There’s not much gap, it’s a very thin line between the teams in the division we are currently in and the Premiership and I don’t mean that disrespectfully to another.’
The skipper goes on to point to the Motherwell game in the Scottish Cup where they lost to Albion Rovers, and the Celtic game where Morton beat them and he believes it’s more a case of dropping standards by a 1% or so on, or holding off a yard that can make all the difference, and for us, teams are raising their game because they know what a scalp we would be.
‘We’ve been really good this season, albeit we’ve not played every game the way we’ve wanted. That happens every season. I just think with the amount of games we’ve won, we’ve done well and we’ve set a standard in the dressing room.’
That’s not to say that he doesn’t believe we shouldn’t be better at killing teams off when we are ahead or going ahead earlier than we are with the chances we are creating, and making things easier for us. There are lots we can improve on, but some of the criticism is coming across as though we’ve lost the last few games.
‘We’re working pretty hard and that’s telling in games, although teams we played treat playing us like it’s a cup final. That’s especially the case in away games. A lot of the boys are playing on adrenaline and that’s why the first halves are as hard. The amount of times we’ve come in drawing then gone on to win has been quite high.’
He has a fair point, but of course from the fans point of view wanting the best standard in games we can have isn’t a problem either. We’re all on the same page in terms of winning, and fans rightly worry that when performances slip, results won’t be far following, but it’s about finding the balance, and as Law pointed out, we are now tighter in defence again, and moving through a match from that position where we are very confident of keeping a clean sheet, whilst a 3-4 nil victory is always nice, the number of goals scored don’t change the points on offer so some games we’ll win with pleasure, other games will be by tighter margins – they all count the same as we look for successive promotions.
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