Panic stations?

 

A little over a week ago I wrote an article about how good we were looking, that Ross Wilson and his team had done great business bringing in players for free that looked the business, and how everything was imploding again across the city...

Dinah Washington sang "what a difference a day makes", well never mind a day, how about a week? Since then we've lost in Malmö and then lost our first league game in over 500 days to Dundee United. Suddenly my praise seems misplaced. Or is it?

The players

I praised John Lundstram after his performance against Real Madrid and the impact he had when he came on against Livingston, with good reason. He looked lively, he looked like he was trying to create stuff, move the ball, and looked a crisp passer of the ball. Yet, in his two outings since then he has looked lazy, lethargic, and devoid of any creativity.

Fashion Sakala is another I was very excited for after seeing him pre-season, but he struggled against Livi, barely featured against Malmö, and was nowhere to be seen when we played Dundee United.

It's important to remember though that they're just getting going and due to suspensions and quarantines after a late summer break they've been thrust into the starting lineups probably sooner than we would have expected them to be.

I still have faith both players will play a big role in our season, hopefully starting tomorrow, but it wouldn't be Rangers if we were ready to start writing players off after a few performances. Mark Hateley was written off when he first joined the club, mainly due to the fact the fans saw him as the reason McCoist was benched. Speaking of McCoist he too was a victim of the boo boys in the support at one time. Both of them went on to do alright with the club though.

I'm by no means saying either of those players will of course reach the level Hateley and McCoist did but merely giving an example of how it can take some very good players a bit of time to grow into the jersey. Especially one as big and heavy as the famous Glasgow Rangers. 

Unfortunately for them however they don't have the luxury of time, this season is one of the most important in the last couple of decades, with the prize of automatic qualification to the Champions League group stages waiting for the League winner, and the possibility of qualifying this year also. That's a £70m+ bonus that could really see us put the boot onto the throat of that lot across the city and lay the foundation to dominate for years to come. To do that though we need to get past tomorrow.

Another player in the limelight the last week has been Cedric Itten, which hit its peak last night with him seemingly "liking" a post on Instagram about Furidashi. It's not a great look, but let's be honest here, he probably doesn't manage his own Instagram the majority of the time and this outrage is more misplaced frustration at what seems to be a difficult period for us. 

Itten hasn't had the best of times when he's started games, which has led to many questioning if he is "Rangers standard" and the unfortunate Instagram situation has just added fuel to the pyre. If he scores the goal that gets us past Malmö I'm sure all will be forgiven.

Malmö

We would all agree we were probably a little bit too confident going into the Malmö game. We had seen them scrape past Helsinki and not look impressive doing so. This game was surely a foregone conclusion. The problem with Europe is no game is a foregone conclusion, as we've shown many times over the years, both to our credit and against.

While we looked very poor in the game Malmö didn't really do anything that worried me, and if it wasn't for 90 seconds of pure implosion from the team we wouldn't have such a nervy feeling going into the 2nd leg.

That being said it is a credit to the team that despite going from 0-0 to down 2-0 in quick fashion we didn't let the heads drop and kept pushing for a lifeline, that was duly offered when Steven Davis scored in the 5th minute of added time. You could see by the reaction of the Malmö players just what that goal meant.

I have every confidence that going into tomorrow night's game, in front of a fully packed Ibrox, we will have more than enough to progress. The players know how important this game is, and for many of them, this will be the first time they get to play in front of 50 thousand Rangers fans singing the team on. They will already be fired up, but that sight will really get them going.

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict a 3-0 win. I won't normally predict games on here, but I'm just very confident that this team will dig deep and get the result we need. I also think once we get one we will get a few and 3-0 seems like the right result to me.

Dundee United

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the Dundee United result was acceptable, it wasn't. No domestic loss is acceptable for Rangers. I will however say that it was over 500 days since we lost a league game, and that streak was always going to come to an end eventually.

That doesn't make it any less hurtful, in fact, given the opponents it's arguably worse, only a loss to that lot could have been harder to take in my opinion. The way the team struggled to break down 10 men behind the ball, a symptom of the earlier years under Gerrard, was a worry, but we need to remember we were missing some key players and Morelos was only just back with the team a few days before.

This team has earned our trust to set that right, and like Malmö, I've every confidence that they will. You don't go from being invincible champions, winning the league in March, and a 100% home record to a bad team overnight. We've not sold anyone of note (yet) and we've brought in a couple of players to add to the depth.

I think the squad could still do with a couple of quality additions, mainly another midfielder, but I think that will very much depend on how the next leg against Malmö goes.

One thing I am certain of though, although it may feel like we've hit panic stations in the last week, I think it's just a bit of turbulence in what will prove to be another wild ride of a season.

It all really starts tomorrow, and it all starts with us giving the team that extra 10% to see off the Swedes and progress one step closer to the Champions League proper. We can do this. We are Rangers. We are the people.

The Rambling Ger

Twitter - @GerRambling

IG - TheRamblingGer