Rangers midfielder feeling heat from some fans?

After such a stellar start to life at Ibrox, Sean Goss found himself on the receiving end of the first significant criticism he has faced since switching Loftus Road for Ibrox.

The 22-year old playmaker, on loan from Ian Holloway’s QPR, has increasingly impressed with his vision, flair and composure, and made most observers wonder exactly why Holloway had failed to select him, never mind let him go out on loan.

Unfortunately for the deep-lying midfielder, his performance against Celtic was regarded by many as by some distance his worst since moving north.

Personally, we found this assessment a little unfair. While we admit his second half was pretty poor (the whole team’s was), his performance in the first was productive and if not exactly shining, it was decent enough.

The difference was Brendan Rodgers had done his homework on Goss, and quickly found that closing him down and cutting off the channels rather stopped him hard in his tracks.

Where before Goss was raking balls out wide or threading them forward, Celtic closed off most arteries and limited Goss’ usefulness.

He found himself being hunted down much more with pressing, and not getting either the time or space to make those telling deliveries.

And it is why Greg Docherty shone more overall – the match suited him far more, with his sleeves rolled up and physical battling his thing. Goss is far more the orchestrator, and cutting that off made him impotent. In all fairness, manager Graeme Murty recognised the problem eventually and removed him, replacing him with Jason Cummings and changing the shape, but by then the damage had been done.

Thankfully the QPR midfielder has not come out the match with too much damage to his reputation overall – it would be astronomically unfair to castigate a player based on one poor 45 minutes when pretty much the rest of his appearances have been excellent.

However, a number of fans have decided already that returning Graham Dorrans should immediately replace him come Saturday and we find such a flagrant dismissal of one of Rangers’ best performers this calendar year genuinely worrying – from fans who often tell this site off for ‘not supporting players’ we find such a fickle desire to see Goss benched after one slightly off-par display in favour of Dorrans who remains a tad unproven as a Ranger disconcerting.

Goss remains a player we rate significantly and we back to respond on Saturday v Kilmarnock.

No player will be outstanding for every minute of every match – and Rodgers really did do a number on Goss. That is the kind of canny management Murty will need to match in order to succeed at Ibrox.

Goss remains a fairly young midfielder with some things still to learn – and Rangers are a better team for him in the XI.