Steven Gerrard’s potential concession that he got the front three wrong was a very interesting admission, especially given it rather deflected away from Rangers’ real problem area last night, in midfield.
Yes, the front three didn’t work well at all, and quality chances were few and far between, but that same front three had been on fire against Motherwell, Morelos aside, with Fashion Sakala and Joe Aribo having very bright matches.
No, the midfield has a lot more to answer for.
Steven Davis and Glen Kamara’s poor nights in Denmark gave nothing for the front three to feed on, and with only Scott Arfield ‘at it’ on the night the link between midfield and attack was far too static and borderline non-existent.
Steven Davis’ passing level, for him, was a modest 88% and Kamara’s even worse at just 82%, which in their position isn’t high enough. Furthermore, Davis only delivered 3 attempts at a long pass, of which just one actually nailed its target.
ONE.
Kamara didn’t try any.
This gave Scott Arfield, Aribo, Morelos and Sakala absolutely nothing to feed off, no service at all, and it was left to the defenders to try and find the attackers, with Goldson the most successful with 4 accurate attempts of 6.
The midfield is Rangers’ problem area – too many players out of form, static, old, whatever the reason – but it’s not functioning.
And blaming the attack for that, while we admit our front line wasn’t on fire last night, seems little more than misdirection to us.
Maybe you’ll think different.
Spot on. We rarely set out with the right balance in midfield these days and I know injuries are outwith anyone’s control but we are guilty of playing two players with almost the same traits and properties so as an attacking force we don’t have that spark that Arfield clearly still has. Shame he is getting to the wrong end if his career. I don’t know what Kamara did to earn a new contract as he has been very ineffective this season and Jack could well teach him a lesson. Kelly needs his chance to get at least a few sub appearances before he becomes the next English league 1 reject and as for Bacuna I don’t know what he is going to give us but you can only hope it is something we are missing right now. Pleased to see Ofoborh training but at the moment we’d almost be better off playing a 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1 with Tav and Patterson controlling the left flank and keeping Bassey as first choice LB until Barisic hopefully regains the form we know he is capable of. The forwards against Brondby were starved of decent supply and were forced to track back as usual. A triple substitution showed Gerrard’s tactical naivety despite it paying off with a goal and we became disjointed after the next two changes.
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