Rangers last night produced a pretty impressive display to overcome Dutch giants Feyenoord, and while we’ve been heavily critical of manager Steven Gerrard and continue to have creeping doubts about his vision for the club, we can’t argue with the results.
Football is a results-based business, it doesn’t matter how you get there, all that matters is you do, and to that end for all our moaning and bleating lately, Gerrard’s record for the season is just one loss and yet another impressive-looking European campaign.
There were certainly weaknesses last night, and it wasn’t a perfect performance, but it was more than enough to put away Feyenoord who came to Ibrox as one of the ‘group of death’ opponents expected to put Rangers to the sword.
That didn’t happen.
Rangers hit the woodwork three times, and missed some glaring chances – while Allan McGregor did have a save or two to make, Feyenoord were nowhere near as dangerous as expected, and critically, the team put in the work ethic we’d demanded.
Even had we lost last night, the players put in a shift, and honoured the memory of Fernando Ricksen with the kind of guts and determination he’d have been proud of.
Does this result fix everything? Do all our criticisms fade away after a really good night and result? No, our concerns remain, but the more Gerrard keeps winning, the more he shuts us up.
We want Rangers to do well, even if we have doubts now about our manager, and beating Feyenoord and getting our UEL group campaign off to a player is ‘doing well’ by any stretch of the imagination, especially on a night our city rivals could only stumble to a draw in France.
So it’s a good start. We saw this European adventure as a bonus, but with results like that, we can’t help but wonder just how far we’re capable of going in it.
We’ll see, shan’t we?
Feyenoord were nowhere near as dangerous as expected because Rangers under Gerrards tactics made it so under the high press and work rate give him some credit will you.
IN you seem to have a bee in your bonnet about Gerrard, in the last few weeks has been evident you seem to want to dissect everything looking for any excuse to have a go at him, absolutely ridiculous, give the guy a break another superb victory and you are still whingeing
Please guys get off gaffers back and just back him. He has brought standards back to our club. Would you rather have someone else in charge
I've come to the conclusion, that European sides can be easier to play against, than the likes of Livingston, Motherwell, Kilmarnock and others in the SPFL. These Scottish teams, are definitely 'sneakier' and play that 'anti-football' against us. Sitting deep and hitting on the counter. We play best, when it's an open game. Which probably accounts for a lot of the reasons we struggled, last season. Two teams just going for it, like last night, suits us best. Combine that with the extra 'physicality' that Scottish teams dole out against us, I can understand why we often, have better results in the Europa. That's my theory, anyway. Though I must admit, i'm very worried about Porto, who have destroyed us, more than once, in the past. Still, we've done well, so far.
I'm not sure where the creeping doubt comes from IN. Gerrard has done, and continues to do, a great job. Don't forget he's only been here around 15 months and he has turned us around. Sure he has made mistakes but so does every manager. He has us playing competitively in a system that suits the available players. What the Feyenoord game proved to me was that when the players turn up and put in the effort then we are a hard team to beat. Had we done that against Separate Entity FC then things would be looking very rosy indeed.
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