“A bit of a bombscare” – is this fair?

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“A bit of a bombscare” – is this fair?


With another Hibs draw again, it is worth having a quick assessment of this infamous December so far.

As we all know, this was crunch time, the month that would make or break this Rangers team and manager.

We had Aberdeen, Hearts, St Johnstone, two helpings of Hibs and Celtic, and this truly was the litmus test that would tell us how serious Gerrard and his management was.

Well, so far it’s been at best a mixed bag which kind of sums up the rest of the season so far.

Three wins of eight and three draws. His overall win record for this month is well below 50% and for the season just about scrapes it exactly.

Where do we go with this? What do we do with it? Pedro was 51.85% at Ibrox while Graeme Murty was a staggering 62.07%.

Quite literally Gerrard, purely by numbers, is certainly doing no better than either of those two, but if we take away the European run it’s 13 wins in 23, with Europe something neither of Murty or Pedro had to really contend with.

Currently the team sits second, with two wins in a row before today’s draw. Scoring has been a dreadful problem recently, and most of our play has been painful too.

But quite honestly assessing where the team and manager are is proving to be much more difficult than black and white.

Perhaps we will have a better understanding come the end of this month, but frankly we’re unconvinced by that.

It feels like Gerrard and the team take steps forwards, but then undermine them. The team improves, then deteriorates.

Perhaps the best to describe us right now is the fluctuating nature of our form, management and results. One minute it flirts with competence, the next it’s struggling against St Johnstone and dropping yet more points to Neil Lennon.

Player management is starting to become a bit of a bombscare at times – for players who have thrived under Gerrard (McGregor, Jack, Arfield and Morelos) there seems to be more who aren’t (Katic, Wallace, Coulibaly, Ejaria, Flanagan, Halliday, Sadiq, and Worrall).

And the more our manager slates his players for poor performances or praises them to the hilt for half decent ones the more bipolar it looks – he’s the boss and he is supposed to maintain balance.

We can’t say he’s doing that much at all, frankly.

We’ll have more analysis in due course but right now it’s all very middle of the road, despite being second.

How are you all feeling about it?

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44 COMMENTS

  1. Dire, There is nothing positive you can take away from the last six months in reality unless you are blinkered. Frankly I would rather be 5th or 6th in the league and seeing an improvement in the players in the Park ability to stick a game out for 90 minutes and make opponents fear them. If we lose on Saturday and Celtic win their game in hand it’s 9 points in it. Is that honestly a big improvement in the last 6 months. We are going from managerial mos-appointment to another time and time again. I am not saying you need to be a rangers man to manage them but you certainly need to have a winning mentality.

  2. Much as it pains me to say Celtic showed today what champions are all about. As I have mentioned previously we have a squad of players who are just not good enough or just don't really care because they are here to get game time before returning to England. Gerrard's record is clearly very average and only Celtic's poor form has kept us in the race.

    • Celtic brought on a player today that cost 9million quid who changed the game in their favour. Gerrard has barely spent that on building an entire squad. Us Gers fans are too expectant too quickly. A quick dose of reality is required for some folk. We've had a great run in europe (remember we haven't done that in f***ing years and we were embarrassed last season trying) are still in contention in the league. A league none of us expected to win at the beginning of the season. Yes, results of late haven't been particularly great but for a young team that has only been together for a few months i dont think we're doing too bad. Hopefully January will allow Gerrard to improve the squad further and we can really judge how far or little weve come at the end of the season.

    • EMcC what is it to be? Ceptic either showed what champions are all about or their poor form has kept us in it. It can't be both! Fact is they, like us, have been dropping points.

    • That might get us out of the Championship after Neilson takes us down. Lois Moult? FFS do your homework!!! 4 (FOUR) goals at Preston this season. What the hell makes him the solution to our goal scoring problems.
      And as for Kilkenny. Are you actually saying that football legend, a man who almost single handedly won a European Cup and a FA Cup for Liverpool, does NOT have a winning mentality. Jeez!!!

    • Appointing an inexperienced manager like Steven Gerrard was not without concomitant risk. I think too many people were blinded by his playing credentials and failed to see his short coming as a new by manager.

    • Appointing an inexperienced manager like Steven Gerrard was not without concomitant risk. I think too many people were blinded by his playing credentials and failed to see his short coming as a new by manager.

    • Gaz, I think too many people are blinded by the fact that Steven Gerrard has never managed a club before. I'm really struggling to think of anyone who has done that and been a success. No, wait a minute, Graeme Souness and Walter Smith!!!
      We could of course have went for the many managers who HAVE managed clubs before. So which one of McInnes, Wright, McLeish, Pardew, Allardyce would you have went for?

  3. We have improved second in the league, ok we know where we want to be, but let's not get carried away we were never really going to walk away with the league, even though Celtic are not anywhere the team from previous seasons.Any manager coming in needs time sure not every player he brings in will be a hit and will be moved on, a win this weekend will be a great lift and it is long overdue so let's keep focused and keep backing the team and manager sure he is learning ,one or two better players we will not be far away.

    • william no way have we improved were a laughing were still playing pedros team only because mr gerrards signings are a disgrace this guy is allready looking for excuses to leave like most off his players ,everything mr g does is wrong ,let him go back to watching eastenders with his wee pal mr lennon ,i for one wont miss him

    • What ye gonnae do, sack every manager after 6 months, from reading your posts you clearly don't have a clue, playing pedros team, only 2 players that pedro signed started yesterday and in the last few games.

  4. Sg is an apprentice and supposedly improved our team we are going backwards again he had not got a scobby what his best 11 are also board don't have clue my team would be McGregor Wallace Flanagan katic goldson midfielders tav jack haliday candias front 2 of lafferty Morelos its not rocket science watp not the board poor management appointments need winning mentality

  5. With an inexperienced manager 25 players brought in for not a lot of money what else do we expect. 2nd in table qualified for europa league let's give the guy till end of nxt season. Players will be moved on better ones brought in.

    • hes the manager he carries the can ,i cant believe it myself thought he would run amock and by the way hes had some amount of luck ,smellies have never looked so bad ,he out does wee pedro with bad signings ,infact pedros players have kept him in a job .

    • What is this huge amount of luck that Gerrard has had:
      Was it the season ending injury to Murphy?
      Was it the loss of Dorrans for most of the season?
      Was it the constant fairly long term loss of Arfield, Jack, Coulibaly, Barasic, Kent, McAulay?
      Was it the 12 minute red card at Pittodrie in the opening game of the season?
      Was it the regular loss of top scorer Morelos due to stupid and often unfair cards?
      Was it the second and most likely winning goal against Dundee being unfairly disallowed?
      Was it the cast iron penalty denied in the 0-0 draw with (ridiculously) 11 man Hibs?
      Was it the stupendously ridiculous red card shown to Candeias at St Mirren?
      Was it any of the many other injuries or poor refereeing decisions we have suffered?
      If this is Gerrard having a good run of luck then I would hate to see him have a bad run run of luck. Oh, wait a minute, just read that we might have 10 players missing for our most important game of the season.

  6. The league will be over after saturday,never beat them with this mince no chance,and i can see a few goals too
    That team is clueless and dire to watch,i dont know how we're second in the league,fuckin diddy league

    Utter embarrassing crap get a grip ffs

  7. far more solid than last year and harder to beat but have been lacking creativity for weeks now and it's starting to cost us. today prime became go a goal up, have 4 or 5 chances to open them up on the counter attack but have no killer instinct in front of goal and no player who can open a defence up with a killer pass. no one in the current squad is the answer so need signings in January or can see us slipping to 3rd or 4th by end of the season.

    • Have to agree"weve nae money again J" and loan players will win you nothing,if they were any good they wouldn't be loan players as they would be playing for the club that employs them.

    • We did indeed but our financial situation requires that loan deals are a part of our signing policy for now. And if we going to get loan players in then getting them from clubs like Liverpool is the way to go.

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