John Lundstram has dropped a hint that the criticism levied at John Souttar (among others) and the ‘writing him off’ is ‘ludicrous’ and you can only acknowledge a player has a problem if they’re struggling for 6 months to a year.
Speaking at the pre-Union presser, Rangers’ popular Scouser was addressing the issue of putting his arm around the new charges to help them, in light of his own struggles earlier last season, but insisted it’s nonsense to suggest anyone can be written off after a couple of games.
He said:
“We all go through tough patches in our career. I wouldn’t even say any of the new players are going through a tough patch, we’ve played 2 or 3 games, to be writing anyone off now is ludicrous.”
Indeed, and those rejecting Souttar (among others) because of a slow start (never mind his bereavement) are very much those this is aimed at.
He went on:
“It becomes a problem maybe if you’ve had a bad 6 months or a bad season maybe, but not after two games.”
Indeed. This is, of course, slightly different to not rating a player, period – regulars will know Ibrox Noise would prefer Allan McGregor over Jon McLaughlin, for instance, but we’d never get on a player’s back if they have a bad match or two when we know they’re a better player than that.
And of course we never gave up on Lundstram himself, who proved everyone, bar a select few of us, completely wrong about him.
‘Give him a chance’ is prevalent more often than not.