Steven Gerrard never says anything just for the sake of it, his words always have a purpose and never with hiding meanings.
With this in mind, it doesn’t take much to work out that the front three that started against Brondby – Alfredo Morelos, Fashion Sakala and Joe Aribo – are far from flavour of the month after being unable to repeat their dazzling display from Sunday.
The gaffer held his hands up for maybe getting the selection wrong though you’d struggle to find someone pre-match who wanted to see it changed from the weekend, however, if his post match interview is anything to go by, I wouldn’t expect to see it again the next time the team is announced, as reported by The Scotsman:
“Ianis (Hagi) and Ryan (Kent) were superb in the time they were on the pitch.
“It’s great to have Ryan back, he’ll give everyone a boost. We know when he’s at it and he’s in that form that he’s so hard to stop.
“I might need to look at a different front three come the weekend. Maybe I got the front three wrong tonight, or the front three didn’t bring to the game what I wanted and what I expected of them. There are two sides to it.
“There was a massive improvement when I made the substitutions. We passed the ball better, looked more dangerous, we were overloading them in the right areas.
“Once we got the right players on the pitch with quality in the right areas, we looked more dangerous. If any team was going to go on and win the game, it was us.”
Morelos and Sakala had chances to put us in front in the first half but also wasted good opportunities to build pressure and lost cheap possession on a few occasions, it’s safe to say that Gerrard wasn’t happy with what he was seeing when he brought on Hagi, Kent and Kemar Roofe – very rarely does he make such sweeping changes so early in a game.
🎙️ PRESS CONFERENCE: Steven Gerrard spoke to the media after tonight’s match against Brøndby. pic.twitter.com/unwXKbq6D3
— Rangers Football Club (@RangersFC) November 4, 2021
As the gaffer said, to lose another cheap goal is also hugely frustrating, Leon Balogun was unlucky but then we should have defended the first header better, it’s getting to the stage where we can’t seem to score the first goal or play without conceding – we can’t keep coming from behind to get results because sooner or later it will cost us.
It’s not quite back to square one but the momentum has stalled once again, personally, I don’t think Sakala should be benched after just a couple of starts though and that a front three of Kent, Roofe and the Zambian international has a good blend of attributes – Aribo dropping back into midfield.
The depth and quality of the squad got us back into the game against Brondby, hopefully that same depth can get us back on track against Ross County at the weekend.