David Weir "We'll learn from final defeat"

[Bearsden bear 2,376]

In the January window i dont think anyone was worried about the defence..pretty sure we had a decent run of clean sheets.

Its only been the last couple of months that we have been shipping tons of goals and unable to change personnel till now.

I think the opposition have sussed us out and know our weaknesses and target them.

Better finding out extent of issue now  than going into next season and finding out then and struggling on  till January at the earliest.....i think we are talking new players here and not tweaking positions or strategy. 

[NeoGeo7 10,515]

Sorry that just doesn't cut it.

yes he speaks well but saying we will always look to improve and learn is what we've heard all season when we dropped points or conceded the same type of goals over and over again.

i know he won't want to single people out but even if he said our defending was appalling and to concede two from a corner is unacceptable for Rangers and we are looking to strengthen that area then I'd be a lot happier. I suspect that is the case internally but it would be nice to hear.

[Blumhoilann 6,712]

We'd weeks to prepare for the Final,we didn't do it.Maybe not totally our fault because the season ended  too early.

By now we should be 'teaching' not 'learning' imo.

 

 

[Swagger 7,946]

Sorry but lessons should have been learned long before the final. The tone was set in the opening minutes when they watched Stokes amble down the left and pass the ball into the net. The space we give teams and some of the goals we concede are shocking - we handed that cup to Hibs on Sat. Really disappointing 

[lutonblue 1,974]

It's the last sentence that gets me , if they only realise after the final that we have defensive problems then god  help us 

[JWAC 2,234]

I don't care about soundbites saying we'll learn from it, just fix it.

If it's not fixed we'll lose many more games in the SPL with how the current defence is. It's currently not acceptable. I'm in no way yearning for Walter Smith but he'd have had that sorted the first transfer window he got.

[We'reGoingFor55 17]

30 minutes ago, Bearsden bear said:

In the January window i dont think anyone was worried about the defence..pretty sure we had a decent run of clean sheets.

Its only been the last couple of months that we have been shipping tons of goals and unable to change personnel till now.

I think the opposition have sussed us out and know our weaknesses and target them.

Better finding out extent of issue now  than going into next season and finding out then and struggling on  till January at the earliest.....i think we are talking new players here and not tweaking positions or strategy. 

Correct.

At the club right now we simply don't have better defenders to replace poor performers and for the Cup Final we had lost our best option at DM.  We can know where we are weak, we can try and learn from our mistakes but if the players aren't good enough, aren't learning from mistakes or are simply badly out of form, there isn't a lot we could do about it until a transfer window opens as we didn't have better options.

Up until the December 19th we had conceded 16 goals in 24 games, not a great defensive record granted but for a new defence in a team that plays as open as we do, it isn't terrible, especially as we seemed to be getting better.  From December 28th - March 11th we went on a 15 game unbeaten run, conceding only 1 goal every 2.14 games and beat Hibs, Falkirk, Raith, Kilmarnock and Dundee in he process.  It was only after that 15 game unbeaten run that we started to collpase, we conceded 9 goals in the next 3 games and a total of 19 goals in the 10 games after the 15 unbeaten, we only managed to pick up 4 wins in those 10 games.

Something clearly went wrong in the middle of March that saw the rest of our season become a bit of a shambles outside of winning the Old Firm game and expected wins against Peterhead in the Petrofac and home wins against QOTS and Dumbarton.  Whatever those problems were, nothing that was done fixed them and we had no other options for defence, only now do we have the opportunity to fix that problem with the only likely solution left which is signing better players.

[eejay the dj 31,964]

1 hour ago, mchammer said:

It was not the cup final that showed areas of weakness.  Quite a few games after winning the league showed up weaknesses.

But we done what needed to be done this season. Get back on top. Job done. Now improvements can be made.

 

Disagree with this . Think we have forgotten how pitiful we were on Sat .

All our weaknesses  were there in glorious  blue shirts with 2016 cup final over the badges .

Some or most never turned up .

Some should never play again .

[weshallnotbemoved! 714]

1 hour ago, Bhudda said:

“Maybe the game on Saturday highlighted the areas we need to improve on.

“We’ll strive to do that, we’ll continue to look to get better and I think it’s quite clear in regards to where we need to improve, so that can be a positive thing for us moving forward.

“Maybe if we had won it would have disguised a few things that we need to improve on and maybe in the long term that will be a good thing for us.”

 

Terrible quote in my opinion. Makes it  sound like it took Saturday for him to open his eyes to our woeful defending despite that since the 3-2 loss to Falkirk we've conceded 2 or more in 5 games, with our only clean sheet coming to Dumbarton (and Peterhead in the Petrofac).

We had an age to prepare for this cup final and we did we done in the previous meeting with Hibs.... conceeded 3 fucking shockers.

too chilled really. If it was one game then fair enough but we have been shit in the last ten.

[weshallnotbemoved! 714]

30 minutes ago, NeoGeo7 said:

Sorry that just doesn't cut it.

yes he speaks well but saying we will always look to improve and learn is what we've heard all season when we dropped points or conceded the same type of goals over and over again.

i know he won't want to single people out but even if he said our defending was appalling and to concede two from a corner is unacceptable for Rangers and we are looking to strengthen that area then I'd be a lot happier. I suspect that is the case internally but it would be nice to hear.

Internally they haven't fixed it. Its got worse.

[mchammer 245]

6 minutes ago, eejay the dj said:

Disagree with this . Think we have forgotten how pitiful we were on Sat .

All our weaknesses  were there in glorious  blue shirts with 2016 cup final over the badges .

Some or most never turned up .

Some should never play again .

Disagree. Think you agreed with what I said. :)

[harlands plater 16,975]

An apology for that unacceptable performances would have been nice.

[eejay the dj 31,964]

2 minutes ago, mchammer said:

Disagree. Think you agreed with what I said.

You said it wasn't the cup final .I say it did show our weaknesses .

[Turnberry18 3,204]

People who are upset by Davie's words are being unreasonable. He is speaking to the Club's website, and he is trying to put a sense of perspective on things. What he really thinks, or what was said in the dressing room, will remain behind closed doors. These appear to be standard statements by Davie to try and draw a line under the past week, in a playing sense. The thing that really hurts about our play and the result, and Davie Weir draws attention to is, is that we let a lead slip towards the end of the game. That will be a big concern, and won't have been taken well by the management or the players.

[KingKirk 25,643]

good statement improvement is the aim of the game we were comfortably league champions now it about getting to number 1 position in the top league.

[Boybluesy 3,708]

20 minutes ago, Turnberry18 said:

People who are upset by Davie's words are being unreasonable. He is speaking to the Club's website, and he is trying to put a sense of perspective on things. What he really thinks, or what was said in the dressing room, will remain behind closed doors. These appear to be standard statements by Davie to try and draw a line under the past week, in a playing sense. The thing that really hurts about our play and the result, and Davie Weir draws attention to is, is that we let a lead slip towards the end of the game. That will be a big concern, and won't have been taken well by the management or the players.

The writing was on the wall before the equaliser............should have put Law on to at least try and close up the midfield IMHO

[Turnberry18 3,204]

Just now, Boybluesy said:

The writing was on the wall before the equaliser............should have put Law on to at least try and close up the midfield IMHO

It was on the wall after seeing what happened at Raith and St. Mirren a few weeks before. Would you have taken Holt off or a striker off for Law, and kept Zelalem on perhaps?

[HG5 11,113]

1 hour ago, ianferguson said:

We must put greater emphasis on clean sheets and stop gifting opponents amateurish goals . No amount of expansive attacking football will justify losing games. At Rangers it's simple, you MUST win and nothing else matters. A defenders job is to keep the ball out of the net first and foremost , but at the moment we have too many defenders  who are better going forward and that'll bite us on the arse in the SPHELL . We are absolutely shocking at winning headers in both boxes and that requires to be fixed as a matter of priority. 

 

1 hour ago, CoplandStandBear said:

Ball being suspended was a big blow as we looked more solid in the semi, Zelalem played well but the dynamic of defending in midfield changes when Ball is out.  Weir is right in saying it would have papered over some cracks, but losing 3-2 at 2-1 up and defending that bad is unacceptable.  

Frankly, I've never bought into the concept that it's better to lose a cup final, in case it papered over the cracks!

Maybe when they dish out medals for 'those who didn't win, but learned most on the day'.

[Corky True Legend 2,682]

An utter load of waffle and an insult to Rangers' fans. How often have we heard that we will learn from our mistakes? It has been clear that work was required on our defence for some time and after that display on Saturday I am surprised that Weir has the nerve to show his face. I hold him largely reponsible for our defensive performances throughout the season, not just the final. A great player but useless as a coach, but we should be used to that.

[HG5 11,113]

1 hour ago, STEPPS BOY said:

At back end of season..

 

3 goals conceded at Falkirk.

3 conceded at Easter Rd

3 conceded at Starks park

3 conceded at Ibrox against QOTS

 

we then concede 3 again in final. The players aren't 'learning' at all..

It isn't even as if we're all that hot going forward these days.

2 goals out of 3 chances on Saturday, same v the tramps - we've been getting some crackers amongst it, but they're more about moments of individual brilliance than consistent team play.

I think Falkirk away was the last time we gave anybody a pasting & that didn't exactly work out, did it?

[Terry Hurlock Loyal 12,133]

Why are not hearing from Warburton?? Seems odd that the biggest transfer in recent times, and he is nowhere to be seen.

[Teamgers 1,214]

8 minutes ago, Corky True Legend said:

An utter load of waffle and an insult to Rangers' fans. How often have we heard that we will learn from our mistakes? It has been clear that work was required on our defence for some time and after that display on Saturday I am surprised that Weir has the nerve to show his face. I hold him largely reponsible for our defensive performances throughout the season, not just the final. A great player but useless as a coach, but we should be used to that.

This x100, Weir was a terrific defender, i've often asked myself this past season what does he do to get the defence that we have to improve, after all that's his department, but to continue with this line of " we will learn from our mistakes " is becoming boring as fuck! Just get it sorted Davie, every cunt and his granny knows that the defence is fucking mince!

[donegal_ger 253]

2 minutes ago, HG5 said:

It isn't even as if we're all that hot going forward these days.

2 goals out of 3 chances on Saturday, same v the tramps - we've been getting some crackers amongst it, but they're more about moments of individual brilliance than consistent team play.

I think Falkirk away was the last time we gave anybody a pasting & that didn't exactly work out, did it?

Pretty much after the first half of the falkirk game we stopped playing how we had done for the all the matches before then, we stopped pressing high up the park, stopped creating chances and started to defend our 18 yard line instead of the halfway line and constantly passed the ball back and invited pressure on ourselves which in turn caused us to give away set pieces and then goals. I don't know who caused this change in tactics the players or the management.

[GaryMc 2,394]

I wish people would stop going on about "when will we learn from it?"

The goals we've shipped have been mostly due to individual mistakes. How can Weir and Warburton really stop them? They can only try and prevent them from happening which at the crunch point of the season we did so which led to us opening up a gap at the top then winning the league comfortably. After that the players took their foot off the gas which was disappointing but expected.

More importantly we only had 3 CB's to pick from and one was used primarily in DM. Who else could we have played? Weir and Warburton will know we need to upgrade our defence, they are not stupid. They wouldn't say that in public though, especially throughout the season. They are all about creating a productive and progressive environment so "we will learn" etc is just part of their working vocabulary.

The "we will learn" applies to Weir and Warburton more than the players now. They have learned the players at the back are not going to be of the required level and they will be replaced in due course. I am sure of that. We needed steel, quality and fight in midfield to protect the defence. They've done that with Barton and Rossiter. They will do the same with the defence in time.

We did the job last year. Weir and Warburton have gained more knowledge about the players and that is where the "we will learn" really come into play in my opinion .

 

[HG5 11,113]

4 minutes ago, donegal_ger said:

Pretty much after the first half of the falkirk game we stopped playing how we had done for the all the matches before then, we stopped pressing high up the park, stopped creating chances and started to defend our 18 yard line instead of the halfway line and constantly passed the ball back and invited pressure on ourselves which in turn caused us to give away set pieces and then goals. I don't know who caused this change in tactics the players or the management.

Probably thought 'if we're going to stop at two, we'll do it with a bit more economy of effort'!

As you say, that's certainly how it looks & has invited the opposition down our end more than they should be - which we don't seem to cope with so well.