They say you learn so much more in defeat than you do in victory, and Rangers have proven that is so very, very true.
In truth, Rangers, Philippe Clement and our fans probably didn’t learn much from the winning run we just had, we beat everyone we faced, and it was great, top of the table you name it.
No one is in any silly way criticising that.
But we didn’t learn a lot from it.
But from Motherwell beating us, giving us a bloody nose, we really did. We learned a tonne from that loss, even if one or two fans accused us on Ibrox Noise of being armchair experts for daring to express a few of those things!
We learned more from this weekend than probably any of the season so far – we learned Celtic are complete bottle merchants, and we could do with both managers of both sides dropping the referee and VAR whining.
The big take from our own loss though was against a big strong physical team who aren’t scared to throw their weight around, we struggle. We’re second best to most balls and they will bully us.
We learned that all the possession and chances in the world mean squat if you don’t take some of them – there is no point fans pointing at the shots on target and saying ‘on another day they go in’ – this wasn’t another day, and they didn’t go in.
We learned Connor Goldson is immune, and no matter what errors he makes, he keeps his place. We learned that without Oscar Cortes, we really, REALLY lack creativity. You can add Todd Cantwell to that.
We learned so many things from this loss, and it taught us a lot more than any of the wins did.
The really big thing we learned is ‘how will we respond’?
Well, we bounced back from the Celtic loss brilliantly, going on a big run which only just ended…well… at the weekend.
A horrible afternoon, a bad loss like that? It keeps you honest, reminds you you’re not the finished product, shows you the boss will make errors and Cyriel Dessers isn’t suddenly better than Lawrence Shankland.
While the brilliant run gave us a lot, it didn’t teach us a lot.
Clement now knows some very useful things he can take forward, or at least should. If he is of the fan view that the refs are to blame and we should have scored, then he hasn’t learned an awful lot at all. We take him to be a lot smarter than that – you don’t win the titles he has without being.
Losses do happen, and we should be outraged when they do. But we now move on.
We have a big one on Thursday v Benfica.
It will be very interesting now to see how Clement’s Rangers handles this one.