It’s the morning after the night before, and while ‘it was only a friendly ffs’ there are nevertheless a lot of unhappy Rangers fans following the appalling performance and result v Olympiakos.
This is the time of the year to get things wrong, yes, and try things, absolutely, but there was something very painful about the loss to the Greeks, and one of the most patent ones is a long-term bugbear of Ibrox Noise;
Jon McLaughlin.
Just what on earth was Michael Beale thinking that a proven shambles like McLaughlin, who couldn’t catch a cold, would get the second half in place of Robby McCrorie when we were already one-nil down?
The guy, without exaggeration, is the worst goalkeeper in the history of our club, including the dire 2012 period where the likes of Steve Simonsen, Lee Robinson and Cammy Bell stood between our sticks. Yes, Jon McLaughlin is that bad, and it is absolutely staggering that he ever received a call up for Scotland, far less more than one cap!
Ibrox Noise cautiously called out Giovanni van Bronckhorst last summer for appointing McLaughlin as first choice, a lone dissenting voice in the support, 99% of whom were keen for McLaughlin to go in, eager for him to ‘get his chance’, convinced he’d totally earned it.
Indeed they saw him as a safe pair of hands given his ‘impressive contribution to 55’. The reality hit them hard against Celtic, against Ajax, against… pretty much everyone really.
Since then he’s become a pariah, fans absolutely clear now on how bad the guy actually is. Like Ben Davies, he’s a £250,000 English League One at best player who cannot believe his luck to be at Rangers on a decent wage.
But the sight of his coming on in the second half must have absolutely killed Robby McCrorie, seeing this utter farce of a stopper replacing him.
And both second half goals were in huge part due to McLaughlin’s inability to actually goal-keep at all.
It is literally diabolical that this guy is still on our bench, a disgrace to the great goalies who have graced this club in its glorious past. McLaughlin is an insult of a stopper, a horrendous and completely incapable goalkeeper.
But more shame on Michael Beale for making no apparent effort to get rid of him, and even worse, giving him game time.
It’s just ridiculous.
McLaughlin didn’t “replace” McCrorrie – I read before the game that both were to have 45 minutes each so I guess they were both aware of that. You make it sound like McCrorrie was substituted on performance grounds.
Oh well aware it was preplanned. That made it even worse. Why give a failure a nice wee 45 minutes when rusty Jack Butland needed all the game time he could get?
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