Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Livingston would, almost, have been accepted if Rangers had made their keeper earn his money but we didn’t even manage to get a handful of shots on target from the 20-odd that were attempted, one of many damning statistics from a hugely frustrating 90 minutes.
Going through a season without dropping points is impossible, sometimes it happens, however, the manner in which we allowed Livingston to get in front and then rarely troubled them in the first half is the most worrying aspect of a performance that could yet cost Giovanni van Bronckhorst his job.
Bizarrely, we are two points better off than we were at this time last season when we were top of the league but we all know that football doesn’t work like that, heavy defeats in Europe and against Celtic have seen the pressure mount on the manager although James Tavernier has drawn comparisons with our current form and the season we won the league, as reported by The Rangers Review:
“Well, we have drawn twice and lost a game. That’s what’s happened in the league if you don’t include Europe.
“The draw at Hibs we went down to nine men. We know we were unacceptable for the Celtic game and today where we drop a point.
“Last week wasn’t our best performance but we got the three points. If you can win ugly.
“We did that plenty of times in the season we won the league. It wasn’t good enough today and we don’t want this to continue.”
The problem is that the “ugly” wins seem to be outnumbering the comfortable ones. Even against Dundee United and Motherwell we’ve managed to turn commanding leads into a nervous final 20 minutes.
The defeats in Europe have clearly had an effect on the players in terms of confidence, as we saw against Livingston, players are too often taking the easy option rather than taking risks, a sure sign of a team that isn’t anywhere near its best and, as the skipper says, has to change.
We’ve heard this sort of rhetoric already this season but, if there is no upturn in form and we drop more points between now and the World Cup break, winning the league will be far from a realistic possibility.