It’s not often that we’ve actually looked in-depth into the flaws of Derek McInnes as a manager. In terms of decisions and calls, we’ve left that one alone.
But we have to take issue with a claim McInnes made last night about why he removed Thelo Aasgaard and replaced with Ross McCrorie.
He said Aasgaard was “not getting involved enough” and he thought the change of shape would help his wingers become “more involved higher up the pitch”.
McCrorie became left back, Sterling remained on the right and Manny and Makhanya made up the now compliment of four.
There so many issues with his reasoning that it just highlights how much McInnes is struggling.
First off, Yokota aside, Aasgaard was about the only player managing pass marks. He got a lot of the ball early on and was feeding the wingers and pushing the ball forward. We can’t quite fathom why the Evening Times rated him so poorly. And regulars to Ibrox Noise know we really don’t rate the Liverpool-born Norwegian international.
Secondly, hinting at Yokota, the Japanese was by far Rangers’ most dangerous attacker. He was beating men, throwing balls in, and was not afraid to take a man on. In truth, Gassama was hardly anonymous either.
But the main reason for this was Thelo’s 10, feeding the ball to the wings as much as he could.
The fact that McInnes claimed Thelo was anonymous and the wingers were hardly in it was absolutely flabbergasting.
To add insult to McInnes’ injury, now-starved of the ball, Yokota was tracking back to try to get it and ran out of gas because of the sheer chasing he was doing. He’s not a defender and chasing shadows isn’t his game.
This got unfair criticism from fans who claimed he was ‘dugmeat’ in the second half and was exhausted/unfit.
How many things are wrong in here?! The decision, the claim, the reason behind it, then the outcome. All counter-productive, wrong, and self-defeating.
Absolutely honestly, if we didn’t know better, we would honestly think McInnes was a Celtic fan trying deliberately to ruin Rangers.
This is the kind of stupid hijacking such an individual would do.
No, if nothing else, it just shows how completely lost McInnes is, how out of his depth he is, and how apparent it is that he has no idea what he is doing.