There’s one thing that is worrying me ahead of our top of the table clash with Hibernian at the weekend, and it’s an issue we’ve seen on more than one occasion.
Hibs, like Rangers, have been able to enjoy consistency in their squad for the last few seasons with most of their first XI having been around for a while now, they understand each other, and the managers tactics, to the extent that they can comfortably claim to be the “best of the rest” outside of the Old Firm.
Talks of a title challenge are premature though because for all that their starting XI is strong, they are only a couple of injuries to key players away from being drawn into the chasing pack – they couldn’t, for example, cope without players of similar importance as Filip Helander, Ryan Jack, Ianis Hagi and Ryan Kent as we have done recently, and perform to the same standard.
The issue this weekend though is that they have a week to prepare their tactics whilst we face a difficult Europa League tie away from home, they also have an attacking weapon that has already been used by other teams to hurt our defence domestically this season – pace.
By pace, I mean Martin Boyle, outside of the Old Firm, he’s probably the best player in the league – he’s certainly one of them anyway and if Jack Ross adopts similar tactics to St Johnstone, Motherwell and Dundee, we could be in bother, the Australian international won’t be as profligate in front of goal as some of the other strikers we’ve faced.
Our management team has faced Hibs often enough to know what kind of threat they pose though and should have counter measure in place, whether that is to drop deeper out of possession or to have a more intense press remains to be seen.
If we can keep Boyle quiet, I’ll be confident in getting a good result, if we repeat the mistakes that we’ve seen from other games, we might not be top of the Scottish Premiership going into the international break – hopefully, the lessons have been learnt the hard way already.