Has Steven Gerrard made a mistake with striker?

With Jason Cummings’ loan switch from Nottingham Forest to League One Peterborough confirmed, Alfredo Morelos’ latest poor display on Friday night does make us wonder exactly where our striking options are and why we didn’t elect to try and clinch the Cummings deal.

We admit it – young Jason struggles up front on his own – he doesn’t have the physique to hold play up and bring others into it, nor does he dominate aerially – we long accepted that when we signed him, and couldn’t fathom why our ex manager wouldn’t play him, or to his strengths. Except twice – twice our lad was in a two up front, and guess what – scored four times.

But, que sera, he has gone to Peterborough and is said to be absolutely devastated he didn’t get the move to Ibrox.

And Alfredo Morelos’ latest display of selfishness, profligacy, pettiness, ill-discipline and pure frustration makes us wonder just what the path forward is up front.

So assessing our striker options we currently have a sub-par Colombian (whose fanboy supporters have finally started to pipe down), a promising but raw youth prospect in Zak Rudden who didn’t make the bench v Shkupi, and a new signing we can’t even judge yet in Umar Sadiq.

It’s not inspiring whatever your stance is and we can’t help wondering if Cummings shouldn’t have either had his loan extended so Stevie could judge him fully, or be signed permanently.

Being more general, I know I know, Let It Gel Give It Time and all that, and we will, but many of our readers mistake criticism for non support.

Only recently we were amused that our articles of late drew so much ire and had us castigated as Celtic fans. This following two months of nothing but rampant positivity on site following the pre-season build up. The moment you criticise what deserves to be criticised, some leap on you and you’re a Celtic fan.

If we were Celtic fans we’d be enjoying the stuttering start our team made on Friday, and would be slagging off everyone. Don’t mistake heartfelt criticism for revelling – we want our team to be better, and we want to feel like this is Rangers again, but it just isn’t right now – not till Stevie figures it out, if he can.

Folk say the negativity is unreal, and we’ve overreacted to one single match. Well, the problem is history – Pedro, Warburton, Murty, McCoist – we’ve seen this exact rubbish before and we know a t*rd when we see it – and we see the same supporters divided down the middle AGAIN, between those who want to give it time and the brave ones willing to call a spade a spade. And just ‘hope’ it turns round again.

It even worried us to see Gerrard bemoan missed chances – the moment we start to do that is the moment we’re justifying poor performances. Should Shkupi bemoan their hitting the bar? How different the night could have been had that gone in? Or being penalised when it wasn’t a penalty. Goes both ways if you want to play that game.

Until this team wins wins wins and occasionally has a bump like all great teams and sure as heck doesn’t struggle in the UEL qualifying rounds season after season to backwater European mobs, this isn’t where we should be.

In truth, other than a few nuggets of positivity, nothing on Friday felt like Rangers.

If that makes us ‘Celtic fans’, we’ll just have to take it. We’re big enough and ugly enough to handle the smears.

We want to look utterly stupid on Tuesday night. We want Gerrard to send our lads out, destroy this mob and make us look very silly. Nothing would please us more.