Is unfavoured star ready to play key role?

Graeme Murty may have to seriously re-think his preferred 4 – 2 – 3 – 1 line-up with his experienced Portuguese internationalist Bruno Alves back to full fitness. Realistically he should walk into the team when you see his footballing pedigree.

I was shocked at how many clear goal scoring opportunities that lowly placed Partick Thistle managed to create against us at Firhill last Tuesday night.

It was frightening and we could easily have been down 2 – 0 before Windass scored his sublime opening goal.

Both of our full backs Tavernier and John, were caught out of position far too often in the first 39 minutes, right up to our opening goal which thankfully managed to change the game for us.

I believe that this was a game Rangers couldn’t afford to lose if they had hopes of finishing 2nd to Aberdeen this season.

Murty took John off injured and brought on true blue Halliday at left back and it seemed to stiffen up our defence for the 2nd half. Personally, I prefer players to be played in their best positions as often as possible.

A good example is Lee Hodson at right back who has never let us down in that position, but several times he has been played as a makeshift left back and he has been poor every time. The reason John was brought to Ibrox, firstly on loan and then as a fully pledged Rangers signing.

Our biggest problem is not scoring enough goals to win games comfortably, especially when we continue to lose our way in the last 15 minutes far too often.

I am desperate for us to tighten up our defence, so that if we only score one goal, we still have a chance of gaining all 3 points. The way the team is performing at the moment we have to score 2 goals to be confident of winning the game.

My plan is to play 3 centre halves for added security and to stop the full backs being over-exposed in defensive situations. This will also help us defend free kicks, cross balls and corners far better than with this present line-up.

By having Tavernier and Murphy or John (or Wallace when fit again) playing in the two wide midfield positions along with our holding midfield players, it should stop us getting over-run in the middle of the park – exactly what happened at Ibrox against Hibernian when we lost a game we could and possibly should have won.

Possible 3 – 4 – 1 – 2 line-ups:

Foderingham
Bates Alves Martin 
Tavernier Docherty Goss Murphy (McCrorie when fit in Mid Defence)
Windass (if he continues to score important goals)
Morelos Cummings (to see if it leads to more goals being sold)

I wanted to include Candeias at wide right, but with Tavernier being let loose, he could be a sensation in that position and he will surely add to his goals total with more attacking freedom.

Other midfield players to pick from
Rossiter, John, Wallace, Dorrans, Jack, Holt, Kranjcar and Halliday

Other possible forwards
Miller, Candeias and Herrera

Ibrox Noise would like to know what line-up would you like to see starting for Rangers when all the players are back and fully fit?