Slow start for Rangers and why we’ve reacted to it

Yesterday on Ibrox Noise was as close to civil war as we can recall, and we don’t deny we allowed our emotions to get the better of us.

Rangers had just lost in the most pathetic circumstances to a side fighting for its life, and our team had disappointed us all.

As such, camps on the page and site were divided by ‘calm down calm down it’s only one loss’ and ‘ffs it’s the end of the world wur doomed’.

We have absolutely no shame in admitting we were far closer to the second group in our thinking, and the reason for that reaction was the fact the first two matches had been exactly the same.

See, this result/performance wasn’t out of the blue, it had been coming. The second half of last season was hardly vintage in quality, and didn’t match the first. The work had been done already in a frankly incredible first 5 months of the season, but that January- period wasn’t as good.

We did secure 55 but not with football of the same standard as the earlier period. So when the side was a bit stale for the bulk of the 3-0 win over Livi, we wanted to chalk that down to just a blip.

When the side was a bit stale against Malmo we wanted to say ‘fair enough, it was just a tough reintroduction to CL football’.

But when the side looked gutless and heartless against rock-bottom Dundee United, that set the real alarm bells ringing.

It’s why we reacted with such absolute horror, and why so many of you did the same.

We love this club and this team and this manager and we want them to show the same love back, and the players really didn’t yesterday and haven’t enough this season so far.

We want them to fight for the jersey always – we can handle a loss if our team just didn’t have it on the day, but they at least worked to try for it.

That just didn’t happen v Utd and barely did v Malmo.

That’s why we were so alarmed.

And we make absolutely zero apology for it.

We know it was emotive, and not all of you shared our views, and that’s fine. Some of the readers naturally went far too far and are no longer welcome on the site. But overall there was a lot of strong consensus with what we were saying.

Is it the end of the world? No, it isn’t. It has, however, been a terrible start to the season, and no one knows it more than Steven Gerrard.

We hope the form clicks in soon, and he’s sure earned the chance to turn the performances around – we did see some ‘Gerrard out’ nonsense and we’re not subscribing to that knee jerk piffle.

But we do have the right to be upset when Rangers players rather disgrace the shirt as they did at Tannadice, and we have the right to express it.

Just like other fans have the right to absolutely and resolutely defend the loss as one of those things and that a bounce back is inevitable. If, that is, they can do it without the personal slurs we saw from many of them last night.

We know the atmosphere has been a bit divisive since the result, between both camps, and the best way to get the good feels back is for Rangers to welcome the Swedes on Tuesday and gub them.

Because lord knows the season needs to get going.