match thread (image) [FT] Rangers 1 - 1 Hibs (Morelos 25)

[buster. 5,261]

8 hours ago, Walterbear said:

Agree tannoch - only issue is he took Candeias off and the goal came from down that side. Other than tired legs I didn’t get the substitutions. Again the CH position was key. That cross was good but should have been defended not just at the cross. SG made a mistake taking Candeias off imo from a defensive perspective. 

The ball that was pinged accross to their wide player was good, it was controlled and delivered quickly with quality into an area that was very difficult to defend against a player attacking the ball. From their POV, it was a well worked goal and from ours, the equaliser seemed to be coming as we defended deeper (clearance that led to goal only reached 30m or so from goal line).

 

IMO the 'clearance' was the main reason if looking to apportion blame but really it was more a bit of quality from Hibs POV.

 

 

Edited December 27, 2018 by buster.

[buster. 5,261]

8 hours ago, Tannochsidebear said:

The lack of creativity was again evident, but I’m going to cut SG some slack here and say that from the squad he assembled the creative players are Arfield, Dorrans, Kent, Murphy, Ejaria, Grezda and all 6 were unavailable today. He promoted Middleton due to his performances and he insists on playing the ever wasteful Candieas as a defensive winger and that is it. Throw in the Sadiq failure as well that we expected a lot more from.

 

normally that should be enough to create chances and chip in with goals at this level but for all the above to have missed huge chunks of the season couldn’t have been predicted. Try taking Rogic Forrest Sinclair and 4 more out the bheasts team and see what they create?

 

Yes we can all have a justified moan at SG being unable to make changes that make a difference or for our defence to hold out against a couple of crosses, and with more experience this might come. Perhaps he needs to be highlighting the huge injury list more often as it appears we are forgetting just how many good players we have that aren’t currently available.

 

just think what the noise is going to be like going into the break when we are 9 behind the bheasts and also behind Killie after 20 games, it’s deafening already. Might be time for us all to take a break!

Agreed TB !

 

Add our injury situation to expectation levels and you'll probably find that there are a few of our players who would rather Saturdays game be played in Azerbaijan. 

 

 

[ranger_syntax 4,424]

8 hours ago, RTB2004 said:

I personally don't see the issue. Yeah, Pena wasn't without his issues but I think it's worth a punt tbqh. In the 12 appearances he did make for Rangers he scored 5 goals from midfield and set up numerous more. He could be exactly what our midfield is looking for. We've not exactly got an awful lot to lose by giving him a chance in January. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. Gerrard has been managing to get the best out of players such as Andy Halliday, a player whom almost everyone I spoke to wanted gone at the end of last season. I can't see why the same couldn't happen with Pena. Afaik he's chucked the alcoholism.

We have plenty to lose.

 

He is on a massive wage and doesn't bother his backside.

 

That can disrupt the squad.

 

He hasn't even given us any reason to think he has improved while in Mexico.

[Rousseau 10,823]

15 hours ago, DMAA said:

We’ve been over this. Lafferty instead of Coulibaly or McCrorie in a forward two. And if we must persist with 1 up front where was Grezda? It’s one thing to make a mistake but to repeat it over and over again is inexcusable. Nobody likes a stubborn manager and we’ve been here before and it’s  so frustrating to watch. And the football we are playing is dreadful to watch. 

Grezda was unavailable. 

 

Putting Lafferty in is not going to create us more chances. We're desperately short of creative midfield players. (I would've played Lafferty, but not as part of a 4-4-2.)

 

If we play 4-4-2 against Hibs, we are at a serious disadvantage: we're outnumbered at the back and Midfield. The only 4-4-2 I would have played would be the Diamond, but we're short midfielders to utilise that, I think. Gerrard has tried that. 

 

Maybe a 4-2-3-1 would have worked, with Lafferty in there, but then again, there's no creative midfielder to make it work. Gerrard has tried that. 

 

The 4-3-3, with two roaming 8s, is the most logical system with the type of players we have available. Is it working? No, it's not. Gerrard is trying it. 

 

Maybe matching their 3-5-2 would've been better, but we've not drilled that and I'm not sure we had enough defenders either? Gerrard has even tried that, at Motherwell. 

 

To be honest, I don't think any formation / system would help because the players just look shattered, both physically and mentally; our small squad doesn't help matters. 

[DMAA 3,658]

11 hours ago, Walterbear said:

Sorry but we create loads of chances. Hibs, Hamilton, Aberdeen and Dundee should have been stuffed 60-0

I’m not sure what games you’ve been watching

[der Berliner 3,815]

I'm somewhat perplex that we utilize the 4-3-3 no matter what, something MW got slated time and again. Perhaps it wasn't the right one for Hibs, as they do like playing football too - well, more often than not. But IMHO it would have suited us against the lesser sides. Dominate the midfield and load the attack. As it stands, we do not have enough MFs who attack the spaces behind the main striker - not least when Arfield is injured. Holt did it a lot in his first season and got goals and assists galore. Afterwards he was pushed further and further back and became the water-carrier for Windass and the like.

 

When we have the ball, we usually leave the 2 CDs at the back and one DM screening the midfield in front of them. I thus wouldn't mind if we actually play a back 3 with 2 CDs and perhaps Halliday on the left side, who can also adopt a 2nd left-sided DM role as well as play some more telling passes that *insert any of our CDs*.

 

Play Jack or McCrorie as the central DM figure and that leaves us with the option of 4 more midfielders plus two strikers. Sounds fine, but at the moment, we would have essentially hardly any creative or attacking MF left. At least for Saturday.

 

That leaves me most annoyed. They have all their elite and star players ready - almost throughout the seasons (sic!), whereas we get wrecked by injury time and again. Our rank rotten luck in that department is beyond joke and may very well wreck our first half of the season, no matter how much we bemoan any real or imagined lack of player quality and tactics.

[Big Jaws 570]

I'm normally a glass half full person but I'm absolutely scunnered with this team at the moment. Yesterday was not a result that can be excused it was yet another poor performance in a long list over seasons of poor performances. Hibs regardless of their result against Celtic are not, in spite of the managers comments after the match, a good team. Their team last year was much better with balance in midfield and an attacking threat as opposed to this version of them and we should have beaten them easily in both games. You lads can talk about formations, and tinkering with them, all day long as far as I'm concerned but IMO it wont solve or fix any issues with this team. The talk is that we've been extremely inconsistent in the league, which to a certain extent is true, but I would go a step further and say that our issue stems from players that are simply not of the required quality/level to play for a Rangers team with aspirations of league challenges and European League contests that has us in the position we find ourselves in. Also when you look at it without blue tinted specs, we got there, our EL matches we'rent much better either with only 1 win in 6 matches in amongst 3 draws and 2 defeats.

 

The only part of the team that seems to have performed with any consistency of note is our defence and in spite of constant tinkering and changing of personnel too has been fairly decent in not shipping many goals domestically. However from mid to front we have been absolutely dreadful with only really two players contributing to our goals tally this season in James Tavernier and Alfredo Morelos. IMO no one else gets pass marks as an attacking threat. Tav, our right FULLBACK, has been on a poor run of form recently and appears to be running on empty leaving Alfie, starved of decent service, to pretty much do it all on his own. I'm not including Jack, McCrorie, Rossiter or Coulibally in this as they have been fairly consistent defensively but Candeias, Middleton, Kent, Ejaria, Arfield, Grezda and Lafferty have all IMO been extremely poor and in truth haven't contributed very much in the grand scheme of things. A look at all of their stats for goals and assists against minutes played does not make for pleasant reading. Personally I would argue that its not just a creative midfielder that's needed or even just a number 10 either but a complete overhaul of our attacking play and personnel, other than Morelos, that needs completely revamped as we don't have the personnel for any formation you lads come up with. 

[RabiDuck 89]

A lot of negativity, and I agree with it to a point, we should be doing better against the "other teams" and not dropping silly points.  What's worth noting however is that we're 3 points and a game behind Celtic, so let's call it 6 points and not play the over-optimistic "points on the board" game.  We've played them once so against the "other teams" they're only 1 win ahead of us (assuming they win it, ok I can't help a little optimism!) so it's possibly not as bad as it first looks in some senses.  Yes, we're not going to win the league this year, but that was always a very hopeful aim. Can we stop 10 in a row? I think so!

[Walterbear 557]

2 hours ago, DMAA said:

I’m not sure what games you’ve been watching

We created lots of chances or openings in all of these games. Enough to win them all comfortably if we had better quality in certain areas. If you don’t want to hear it from me then listen to SG who knows more than either of us. We dominated Aberdeen, we pummelled Hibs at Easter Road, we could have been 3-0 up yesterday. Ok the Dundee game we were pysh but still got in a hell of a lot of good areas. Our problem is slow transmission. As I said it’s like waiting for a bus in the pyshing rain watching our attacks develop so I get the slumps and the slickness of movement and midfield quality isn’t there with the current players but the reality is we’ve had opposition goalies playing well and we’ve squandered space. We haven’t spent £10m net and we’d 6 months in. The best thing the fans can do is show patience because no one else is going to work miracles with limited funds compared to Celtic - and playing 4-4-2 and becoming another Aberdeen isn’t the ambition. 

[DMAA 3,658]

You can’t replace Arfield with McCrorie and expect us to keep creating chances and scoring goals. And we have no right to expect Coulibaly and Jack to play as “no 8s”. We are currently playing with three no 6s (defensive midfielders).

 

I understand the loyalty to Gerrard but I am nothing but angry when I watch attack after attack after attack breaking down because we are playing Mackeleles as Lampards and expecting players who have made a living out of tackling to magically become flair players who can be relied on to open up defences. Coulibaly is getting slaughtered because Gerrard is stubbornly forcing the system on the players available to him rather than adapting and playing a 4-4-2 based formation with Lafferty on. 

Edited December 27, 2018 by DMAA