It’s six games since Rangers scored from a genuine opportunity created from open play.
Don’t believe me?
Scott Arfield against Ross County on the 22nd of August. It’s been a while – James Tavernier’s screamer v St Johnstone was our last from open play, but you’d hardly call it a “chance”.
Yes, every goal counts and that set pieces are just as important but, as we saw against Motherwell, with 13 corners and 24 attempts in total, we are nowhere near firing on all cylinders, our recent record just isn’t good enough.
It’s starting to become a problem, we did look better at the weekend, our xG being the highest of the season, at least an indication that we created some decent chances and really should have scored more than just Fashion Sakala’s header but it’s way too long for a squad that possesses so many quality players to not finish any opportunities at all in over 450 minutes of action.
Full StatsBomb match review to come with shot maps, trendlines etc.
That was Rangers’ highest xG tally of the league season at 2.42.
As Gerrard said, that should have been a ‘straightforward’ home win.
— Joshua Barrie (@JoshuaBarrieRR) September 20, 2021
One of the main reasons we won the league last season was that we had goal-scorers all over the park, Tavernier, Arfield, Joe Aribo, Alfredo Morelos, Kemar Roofe, Ryan Kent and Ianis Hagi all big contributors to the goals for column but for one reason or another, nobody has really been on fire so far this term.
Sakala and Juninho Bacuna will add a fresh impetus to the match day squad and we have seen already in a short space of time that neither of them are afraid to pull the trigger – the old saying about not winning the raffle if you don’t buy a ticket comes to mind.
If Rangers are to win the ultimate £40million raffle prize of a place in the group stages of the Champions League, there will have to be a sharp turnaround in fortunes, with Celtic struggling, it feels like a great opportunity to apply some real pressure, pressure that we saw them collapse under last season.