Steven Gerrard’s assertion last night that 6 or 7 players didn’t reach their expected targets was an interesting observation, and was a small sign our manager has his moments of imperfection.
Don’t get us wrong, he wasn’t far off to say a lot of them weren’t up to it, but the fact he singled out Filip Helander and Steven Davis for praise was telling.
Helander clearly struggled last night, with the only positive comments we’ve heard on him coming from his manager, while Davis was quiet and subdued with just that impactful moment in the final second.
But what do they both have in common? CL experience, that’s what.
And it’s majorly interesting that the rest of the team, without a CL fixture to its entire career credit (aside goalie Allan McGregor, of course), was criticised by its manager for not hitting the height he expected them to at a level they’ve never actually been to before.
The only CL inexperienced player to have experienced lots of top level football was this summer’s Euros for Glen Kamara, and of course he wasn’t there last night.
The rest? Borna got 10 minutes this summer and that was it.
What are we trying to say?
This is new territory for this Rangers side, and while we support Stevie unconditionally, his quotes of criticism were a strange angle and we’re sure/hope he has his reasons for saying players who had never competed at this level did not hit the height he expected.
And for singling out two players who really didn’t have great nights at all.
Still, we have another 90 minutes to right the wrongs of this one.
Don’t agree with You on this one guys. To play that bad and still be only a goal behind going into the next game shows how poor Malmö are. As for never reaching these heights before for most players this isn’t the champions league… these are the qualifiers. Stevie was right to lay into his players. The problem isn’t that we are in champs league qualifying the problem was we stopped doing the basics right. The goals were down to us being poor not how good they were and we were also found wanting up front. The only mitigating factors are that Malmö are 15 games into their season and got the weekend off to rest. We’re still getting up to speed but if we don’t let the players know that what we seen last night wasn’t close to good enough we might as well just forfeit the next game and see if we can get back into the europa league. If we play like that against olympiacos or group teams if we get that far then we will fare no better than septic did.
We don’t deny Malmo are no Madrid, but your disrespect for them reflects the bulk of arrogant Rangers fans who gave them no credit for their performance and blamed us instead. We weren’t good enough, but Malmo are a tonne better than the cannon fodder some claim.
No disrespect to Malmö at all but that was them at full capacity and we were at fault for both goals. Other than that big Al didn’t have a lot to do. If you don’t think that Stevie should be calling out that performance and that Malmö deserve all the credit for the win and that it wasn’t how bad we played then you must deep down think we’re not good enough for the CL because Malmö and the way they played would be cannon fodder in the CL. I 100% think with both teams firing on all cylinders they wouldn’t touch us.
I predicted this score of 2-1 to Malmo before the game started. I also predicted PSV to beat Midjtyland by 3 and they did.
Sweden are a long way into their season and that was the difference last night. Rangers can beat them in Glasgow with the likes of Aribo and Morelos if they play.
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