It’s early in the season but some Rangers fans have condemned John Souttar to the B Team already after the former Hearts man’s struggles with the weight of the shirt appeared stark against Livingston.
Given his big shiny debut today at Tony Macaroni for his first competitive appearance in the colours of the Famous, the 26-year old was in from the beginning, and fans were far from impressed.
He’s definitely not started off on the front foot at all, and has looked sluggish, scared, and his part in the goal today only weakened his case for keeping his place.
Is it fair?
If you play for the Mighty Glasgow Rangers you’re going to be judged for every error you make, and sadly Souttar hasn’t slipped into the role like a glove, but has looked a rabbit in headlights so far.
Is the weight too heavy?
Maybe, and not everyone settles at the same pace – Tom Lawrence might have looked classy in preseason but he was disappointing today and didn’t have a notable impact. And despite our slightly critical rating of Tillman’s debut, we also noticed he did have an intelligence and positional sense – just needs to get up to speed with the SPL.
So different players adjust at different levels.
Unfortunately Souttar’s been consistently poor in all his appearances so far, and while he was an excellent stopper for Hearts, this looks psychological more than anything else.
He was rightly taken off with the similarly-poor Kamara, and those changes altered the game.
Rangers wait for no man, so if John wants to assert himself as a real Rangers player, he’ll have to up his game, because Gio isn’t a charity.