SIRB_72

We dropped two points with 9 men after being ahead with 11. A horrendous refereeing decision and Alfie being a fucking wank again left us short. I couldn't give two shits whether his press conferences are boring, they're all boring. At one point or another people thought Warburton was engaging. Last time I heard about Gio's interviews was in the two weeks we dropped those points to Aberdeen, County and celtic. The man is that uninspiring he lead to players to a European final. His subs have also won us some pretty big games and it's something he's actually improved on a lot over the last 6 months unlike the previous manager.

Two years ago he was a player who contributed with everyone else but now he over contributes. Tav has papered over some amount of cracks over the last 12 months!

There's bits of this I like and bits I dont. He makes the point about the possession game being passive and side to side and nearly costing us at places like Dundee and Livi though we won because of the possession game and breaking them down. St Johnstone was never in doubt either despite it being turgid. An example of lost points was Dundee United where our possession game in the first half meant we utterly battered them in the second and if wasn't for some horrendous finishing we'd have won. Our style was also very different when we drew at Aberdeen and Ross County. I don't know how we can blame passivity for McGregor making two huge errors in one game when he rarely made any like that in his whole Rangers career up until then. If anything at times I think we should be more patient. In comparison to the whole league we shoot the highest percentage of shots outside the box. Some might be happy with that and could also be considered varied but it's not really effective. We're only 4 games in but compared to two seasons ago we're shooting 20-25% less inside the 18 yard box and having just under double the amount of shots outside the box (we're averaging more shots this season). That might also be the reason why we're only getting about 27% of our shots on target (10% drop from 20/21) compared to celtic who get about 43% of their shots on target but they also shoot in the box more often than us (13-9 per game). My worries are with this that it may be down to needing another creative midfielder like he says or it maybe down to the general play and players are just getting frustrated and having pops. Continue with that element of our game and we wont be winning the league!

Let's see. Need to make sure we beat Ross County first!

It's actually 69 points for them against the rest since Gio came which is 2.76 but apples and pears really compared with the 72/2.88. We can pick and choose what periods we want to and don't want to include. We could trade off postecoglu's first 6 games (not including Ibrox of course) when they picked up 10 points in 6 with Gio's 7 games after the winter break (not including parkhead) with 13 points in 7. Going by that and leaving out both managers worst spell we'd have Gio picking up 55 in 19 (2.89) and postecoglu 85 in 31 (2.74). The games against them and the 1 in 9 really did kill us. Though the semi and the game at parkhead showed a lot of improvement whether you view the latter as canon or not. A lot of that point difference comes from the head to head as well though. Turn those two defeats against them into draws and we win the league. Gio will have a stigma in the league because of how things turned last season combined with how much they did pick up. Be silly to have my head that much in the sand but I just dont things are that bad as some of the reaction yesterday and this morning has provided. In about 6/7 weeks I may think differently but I hope not!

I just want to reiterate that Gio has picked up more points per game against the other 10 clubs in the league than Postecoglu has. Over those 34 games it's extremely marginal but we're in good hands.

We never scraped past Livi, we could have beat them 4/5-1 at the end of the day. Tillman should have scored a couple and Colak's "offside" goal. We dominated St Johnstone and Kilmarnock as well. Yesterday was tight as it always is at Hibs and despite not playing well, neither did they for that matter, we were 2-1 up. As I said, yesterday was a freak in relation to having two sending offs. Do we really drop points in that game with 11 or even 10 men? We grow into bigger games which I'd class away to Hibs, Hearts and Aberdeen as which in itself is a wee bit of a problem with Gio but not a hugely destructive one. That got cut off yesterday with Lundstram's unfair sending off and then the second red. If we're thinking that celtic will never drop points we're in for a pleasant surprise as well

I remember about this time of the season two years ago drawing at Hibs with 11 man and going onto win the league unbeaten. The amount of people calling for Gerrard's head that day was something else. Results like this are going to happen, going down to 9 men is also a freak thing to happen, it happens like once every 3 or 4 years to any club. There's 102 points still to play for!

I'm not understanding the fret over McLaughlin so far. The majority of people wanted him in, domestically, after McGregor's mistakes and he's seen as a safe pair of hands. A safe pair of hands that's never done us a bad turn either. The main doubt was whether he could make big saves and so far against USG and PSV he has made some cracking saves to keep us in ties and games. Some of our defending, in Europe, midfield to back has been a lot more worrying than McLaughlin's goalkeeping.

Definetely. He is a hard worker, sometimes a bit dozy but seems to have been working on it.

I actually don't like him playing on the right I think it takes a little bit away from Tav's game. Same goes for Sakala when he plays out right. I actually think for the relatively small wage and homegrown status he is fine and a good squad player. He's more suited for bigger games for me where Tav isn't expected to bomb forward as much. Decent player to have when a game is stretched and there is space to play in, though does need to improve his final decisions. Has improved in tracking back though and staying focused.

Gio has a few decisions to make today because he has some guys coming into a bit of form just now like Lawrence, Colak and Sands but we also have to try and involve some of the new signings and injured players who are coming back. It's actually a nice wee spot we're in. Not to discredit St Johnstone, Ross County or QotS but these are the games we should be using to bring guys in. McLaughlin, Tav, Goldson, Davies, Yilmaz, Lundstram, Kamara, Matondo, Tillman, Kent, Morelos.

Sands is and will prove to be a good player for us. His ability to play in defence and midfield will prove crucial in a season where we will look to play 55-60 games at the very least. Despite his high transfer value he'll be on peanuts because he's still on his MLS homegrown contract, which is an added bonus. I think he'll end up being revelation of the season like Bassey was last season. Gio has a real talent for improving players as we've seen with Bassey and Lundstram.

I got caught out by this last week but strongly assuming Lundstrum is in midfield that is a strong line up. Much stronger bench helps as well!

Translate that over 38 games it's about 9 wins over a season. That isn't close to top 8 - that's bottom 3 form!

Also I know he's a right sided player but we need to stop playing Scott Wright in front of Tav. He's not good enough to go one on one with full/wing backs, his decision making is poor and he just fucking gets in Tav's way tbh. I don't mind him. I certainly think he can play in games like this today, get the odd goal, cost pennies and count as homegrown in Europe but it really does have to stop now.

Nothing spectacular today but 3 points nonetheless. It's going to take a while to get some of these guys all settled in and on the same page come game day but as long as we're picking up points we'll reap the rewards later in the season.

Alfie being back is some great news. For tomorrow I'd go McLaughlin, Tav, Goldson, Davies, Yilmaz, Lundstram, Arfield, Tillman, Lawrence, Sakala and Colak. Kilmarnock will play a 5 at the back so it's important we try and get behind out wide and get to the byline. Then it's even more important we have guys who can on the end of things and Arfield, Lawrence and Tillman seem perfect for this.

Defensively I don't mind him filling in between the centre halfs when we're under extreme pressure. We've seen before though, even when starting in midfield when he has to cover out wide it's a clear weakness. In attack if we don't have him or Davis we lack a forward ball from deep in midfield. Then when he is further forward he's great at winning second balls or slowing the other team down.

All up for this especially at Ibrox. We played this at Ibrox a few times during the 20/21 season with Alfie and Roofe up top, Jack holding by himself and a combination of Aribo, Kent, Arfield, Hagi in behind the front two. We battered a few teams Hamilton & Aberdeen coming to mind and it was some of the best stuff I'd seen us play in years.

Basically sums up my issue with us centrally. Push Lundstram up to Kamara and Kamara up into that huge gap between Jack & Tillman and Colak. No wonder the passing was so laboured.

We don't need to necessarily play Colak in a two we just need to get bodies and movement around him. From the limited I've seen from him he stays between the posts, doesn't come deep but does make angles to make spaces for others. The second half against Livi when we had Tav and Borna high, Lawrence and Tillman just in behind him moving around and eventually Arfield doing similar it worked a treat. We were way too disjointed last night for anything like that to happen. I certainly think Colak will work and will score goals but it's all about using players strengths and hiding their weaknesses. This is something I think Gio will sort with Colak and the other signings.

I'd rather McLaughlin than Siegrist. Another one who turns into Gigi Buffon up against us.

Change of shape would definetely have helped us going forward. If we had that same 11 with Lundstram in midfield, Kamara just ahead of the latter and Jack along with Tilman starting off the right and moving centrally and Matondo out left with Barisic rather than Tav we would have had overloads centrally and on the left, leaving Tav 1v1 with their wing-back. I can't disagree with you on the individuals though. Kamara and Sands both ball watching for the first and Borna just way to weak. No shape can fix that rubbish. That's true in regards to the goals and that decision was very harsh, at the same time McLaughlin kept us in it. We've seen before what we can do at Ibrox in Europe so nothing is lost!

I doesn't help either when Gio plays our best and most expensive (in terms of wages) midfielder in defence.