Rangers should have opened the scoring against Livingston after just a couple of minutes when Ryan Kent’s cross from the left found Antonio Colak six-yards out. The normally clinical Croatian chose the worst possible time to have an off day though as his downward header crept past the post and the rest, as they say, is history.
If Colak was culpable at one end, so too was James Tavernier at the other. The Gers captain failed to see a ball out of play before allowing a cross from the left, that it also took a deflection on its way to Jon Nouble only added further insult to injury.
Speaking after the game, via The Rangers Review, Tavernier – who is still fielding questions about his fitness – was quick to hold his hand up and take responsibility,
“Yeah, we know it’s not good enough. I take the blame obviously for the goal we lost.
“It was poor defending from myself and after that they sit in. We have time in the game to rectify it but the first-half performance wasn’t good enough.
“Second half we changed things and tried to create chances. The result isn’t good enough, especially at home so we are all disappointed in the dressing room.”
It was as soft a goal as the one lost to Dundee United and the one away to Motherwell, we continue to shoot ourselves in the foot but, this time, we weren’t 2-0 up when it happened or capable of digging ourselves out of the hole. We couldn’t have chosen a worse team to go behind to either given Livingston’s tactics on a weekly basis.
Tavernier is almost symptomatic of the whole team just now, he is miles away from his usual level and the player who was the top goalscorer in the Europa League with the fastest recorded top speed in the tournament too – the skipper, like his team, look like a shadow of their former selves.