Manager Mark Warburton has said that the performance by Rangers in last night’s loss to Livingston was not acceptable.
Dropping points for the third straight Championship fixture, Warburton knew it wasn’t good enough as he spoke to the Official Site in his post game press conference and he demanded a response from the players.
‘As a club it`s not about the players separate from the staff, it`s us together. That was way below our standard, one point from nine. Hibs after the Celtic game, you can maybe say it`s understandable, not acceptable but understandable. Saturday you can say about the celebrations but still again not good enough. But tonight was way below Rangers` level and you can say the team were tired, they`ve had no days off, but those guys (Livingston) are scrapping in relegation play-offs. They won tonight and they had the two best chances in the first half, so for all the possession, that`s not acceptable to Rangers Football Club. It`s not about them, as in players, it`s one group together and that`s not our standard.’
With the title not affected as that’s already ours, and with the Petrofac Training Cup in hands and hopes of a Scottish Cup and European football, Warburton knows we can’t take the foot off the pedal like that again this year as we need to keep the success going.
‘They`ve set high standards, they deserve the rewards they have got, they`ve played well, they`ve played with intensity and purpose and quality and style, moving the ball quickly, good rotation, good timing of movement and tonight that was sadly lacking in most areas. Only in the last 10 to 15 minutes did we show any real urgency and we had a few chances, but we didn`t test the keeper for 33 minutes in the second half which again is well below our level.’
With Rangers having plenty of possession, he repeated it was no good having the ball if you didn’t do anything with it and that was our problem on the night.
‘Possession for the sake of it is irrelevant. Look at Leicester, they probably have 30 to 40 percent possession in most games and they are top of the Premier League and rightly deserve to be there. So it`s possession with a purpose and passing with a purpose. Too many times tonight backwards and square, hesitant, loose in our decision making and that`s not us. So it`s nothing the players wouldn`t say themselves and it`s not about them and the management staff having a rant at them. It`s about us together. Did we get the loading right as staff? Did we get the days off right as staff? Did we get the timings right as staff? We`ve got to look at it because as I`ve said that`s unacceptable.’
He ended by saying.
‘We`ve got 24 days to be the best we can be and we will make sure that when the 21st of May comes around we`ll deliver the performance that we know we are more than capable of doing.’
