Murty warns Rangers to ignore ‘the noise’

Despite the loss at Ibrox to Celtic, Graeme Murty has urged his players to block out ‘the noise’ from outside the dressing room from columnists, papers, sites like this and concentrate on their own games.

In a slightly strange address, the manager spoke of how the players should ignore the negative comments, despite repeatedly slamming them in post-match interviews himself.

The Rangers boss arguably finds himself under mild pressure for the first time, and while his sometimes curious comments previously were overlooked (Celtic Park’s atmosphere is second to none, anyone?!) because he was learning on the job, and was still caretaker, Sunday’s defeat has changed the landscape a tad along with his being judged differently as semi-permanent boss. Now his comments are combed over to a much greater extent.

He said:

“We have to make sure that as a group we don’t allow the noise outside to come inside. I have said to the players that every single man and his dog, who has an opinion, who is an expert, will write their column and will say all these things we didn’t do and that I didn’t do, that I needed to change this and I needed to do that and that is fine, that is no problem. What we have to make sure is that this group stay strong and all of that noise outside can stay right outside because we know the distance we have come, we know the progression we have made and we can’t afford for one negative to derail everything.”

Fair enough – a manager should always protect their players from criticism where possible, but this does seem a little odd given he joined in with it. To play devil’s advocate though, this defence does seem very much about himself and the criticism he has correctly faced about the defeat; and to his credit he accepts the right of sites like ours to express those opinions.

He just does not want it to affect the group. We also see no issue with that. We are just a little bewildered as to why one minute he attacks the players then the next appears to complain about the effect any attacks could have on the group.

One thing about Murty – he certainly keeps us guessing and thinking!