Rangers News

“It’s not easy” – Makaay reveals striker role difficulties

|
Image for “It’s not easy” – Makaay reveals striker role difficulties

When Steven Gerrard assembled his coaching staff, there was a clear explanation of what each role every member of his team was tasked with performing. For Giovanni van Bronckhorst, it’s not always been as clear-cut.

Roy Makaay in particular has come under scrutiny given that both Dave Vos and Ceri Bowley were appointed as first-team coaches and have a practical job on the training ground.

Speaking on the Graham Hunter Big Interview Podcast, Makaay has shone a bit more light on his role and why his involvement with strikers isn’t as clear cut as first thought:

“I’m a first-team coach on the pitch helping him but giving a bit of extra attention to the strikers where possible. With the schedule we have it’s every few days. To do extra work is not easy.

“It’s recover, get fresh and play again. Sometimes we have the youth strikers like Robbie Ure, it’s nice to look at the youth players and I’ve seen him play a few times in the Youth Champions League.

“We can discuss what he thinks and what I saw in the game.”

Players like Alfredo Morelos, Kemar Roofe and Antonio Colak will require minor adjustments to their games and little tips here and there from someone who was a top striker in his day, however, for Ure, having any input from Makaay will have a huge effect on his development if he absorbs the advice he is given.

The current break should be used to look at more than one aspect of where we are going wrong and that includes the roles of the coaches. Do we need so many to have hands-on roles or can we use them efficiently? There is no reason why Makaay, especially given our problems with converting chances, can’t be given a bigger remit to work with our forwards.

Our wingers in particular could do with some extra work towards knowing what positions to get into and how to finish in certain situations, although I’m not sure even Pep Guardiola could get a tune out of them given how some of them have been playing this season.

1 of 10

Rangers went toe-to-toe with Inter Milan to sign Ronaldo when he left Barcelona.

Share this article