Yesterday’s victory over St Johnstone at Hampden, in front of an abysmal 23,000 crowd (maybe the lowest Rangers home crowd for a competitive fixture in recent living memory) was hardly in itself a polished performance.
Another questionable starting XI from the manager saw Kieran Dowell inexplicably start in Connor Barron’s place, as the home side struggled badly to exert itself.
St Johnstone, frankly, were the better-organised side for large spells, Craig Levein putting out a team which worked hard and showed a lot of guile. If not for the woodwork, they’d have gone in ahead at the half time interval.
The second half Rangers sub didn’t change much either initially, with Dessers replacing the utterly dreadful Danilo but the flow of the game staying as it was. Rangers huffing and puffing but not looking terribly dangerous enough of the time.
It wasn’t till Connor Barron’s introduction for Dowell at 60 that things changed, which all happened around the time of Dessers’ brilliant solo goal despite referee Matthew McDermid’s (ironic v St Johnstone) best intentions.
Barron brought life to the match, made things happen, and after a slightly ‘lesser’ midweek performance v Kyiv, this was back to the energetic and brilliant Barron we all know and love.
After his arrival, it was reasonably comfortable for the home side, Ross McCausland adding a lovely second and staking a claim again to play a bigger role under Clement.
That put it beyond doubt, but every time we see a Rangers XI from this manager, it’s clearly ‘wrong’. Few fans believe in it, and it’s not till he changes his own errors that things improve.
We do not know why he won’t stick with the best XI he has, although we’ve offered theories as to reasons, but end of the day, Clement keeps doing this – picking bad XIs and then changing it later when they don’t work.
He works backwards, and we’re not too sure why. Why give the opponent a head start?
Beats us. End of the day we are through, and that is what matters.
But lord knows Clement and Rangers aren’t making it easy these days.
Well, surely Clement has to bed in players coming back to fitness and rest some who have played too much. these are the decisions he is employed to make. Barron has been playing well, but he felt he needed a break. Danilo and Dowell have not played recently or in months for Danilo, so got 45 minutes. I would rather he did that that asked them to play 90 then they break down.
He sees them in training and reads the detailed data. Also, it is a squad game. The days of 13 men winning the league as Dundee United did are long gone. So he has to rest, rotate and bring players in gradually
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