I’ve already written about my biggest fear ahead of the Old Firm derby on Wednesday not being what Celtic will bring, but that we don’t do ourselves justice because of negative tactics.
Against Aberdeen I thought that Giovanni van Bronckhorst had a lot to answer for, the heat maps – graphics that show average player position – made for appalling reading, the full-backs have never been so deep and almost every player spent the whole game in our own half.
That simply wasn’t the case against Ross County. We were aggressive and played about as well as could be expected given the conditions.
I don’t like it either when we are passive though, I just don’t think it suits the players that we have in our best XI. Ryan Kent, Joe Aribo, Glen Kamara, Scott Arfield, all of them thrive on turning the ball over in the opposition half and driving at goal.
In defence, we look more secure when we are engaging opposition strikers in one v one situations rather than sitting back inviting pressure.
Did being passive contribute to the goals we lost? No, but this doesn’t make it any less frustrating seeing us drop ten yards against Ross County. Should it have made any difference to the result? Again, no. The players we had on the park should have been able to see out the game but they let the manager down.
In short, the goals we lost were amateur and you’d like to think that they won’t happen again – three times we gave Ross County players chances to score and they took them all, a repeat on Wednesday would see us lose our place at the top of the Scottish Premiership.
Totally agree with this article…..negativity will NEVER win matches and against Ross County we made an ordinary team look pretty good. Rangers scored their goals by being aggressive, then, on each occasion we lapsed into the old failing of backwards / sideways/ backwards passing, slowing the whole tempo down to the opposition’s liking. Having said that a lot of the experienced Rangers players simply let the Club down yesterday! How often has this happened this season too? Dropping SILLY points is gonna cost us dear!
There is a torpor about the team and this has existed for some time. How they play in European games differs significantly from how they play in The SPl. No var and some poor, inconsistent referees not meeting the required standard. How can they perform to a higher standard in Europe against teams of a higher technical standard but be outmuscled in Scotland?
It is as though the players are tired of playing against teams who set out to play depressing, negative formations.
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