Rangers lost their first game of the season on Wednesday night in, without a doubt, their worst performance, getting punished on each occasion that mistakes were made by an in-form St Mirren side.
Credit where it is due, Jim Goodwin’s side made it hard for Rangers and they should be applauded for that, but to hail it as a tactical masterstroke is being generous to say the least and Si Ferry, speaking on Go Radio, has taken it too far, as reported by The Daily Record.
When asked for his opinion on the upset, he claimed that St Mirren have shown the way for other teams to emulate:
“Fair play to St Mirren, Jim Goodwin got his game plan spot on and he’s the first manager to stop James Tavernier.
“Him putting a left-back on Tavernier, I don’t think he’d have cared if (Brandon) Mason gave the ball away every time he had it. He was in there to stop James Tavernier playing.
“And it just shows you how important he is to Rangers.
“Rangers might now need to come up with a new way of playing. Because if I’m a manager playing against Rangers on Saturday, my game plan is, ‘I’m going to copy what St Mirren did.’ “Can we stop Tavernier playing and can we hit Bassey or Barisic on the break?”
It’s not rocket science, Rangers full-backs have contributed to over 20 assists and nearly 20 goals between them this season, the same with any team, you try and nullify their biggest threats, but this isn’t why we lost.
We still scored two goals and got behind their defence often enough to score more, had a goal – rightly – disallowed and should have had a penalty but simply made too many mistakes in defence, that two all of the goals came from possession being coughed up by a player in Light Blue says it all, it also didn’t help that Leon Balogun and Calvin Bassey had their worst games since signing in the summer.
Score prediction
Win
Draw
Loss
We got ourselves in front early, switched off and couldn’t get going again, having to defend corners with just one centre-half on the pitch wasn’t exactly ideal either, hence the reason Steven Gerrard shouldered the blame.
How we react over the next couple of weeks will be key to the outcome of this season starting with Motherwell today, let’s just hope that Steven Robinson isn’t as switched on as Ferry as to how easy it apparently is to beat us…