What is wrong with this team?

[Valance1690 3,826]

1 minute ago, Bad Robot said:

we seem to have put everything (signings and drive) last season into stopping 9.75 and it looks like they’re throwing everything at the automatic CL qualification and the immediate financial return that brings. 

Our signings so far and the malaise of the recent performances is giving me the feeling that as a club we’ve fell asleep at the wheel but I take heart on the win last night with ten men.

The performance from 60 minutes I hope will be the boost the players needed and we’ll kick on from here.

They've thrown what they had at shite basically and hoped some of it would stick, some of it seems to have so far & they're certainly more dangerous than last season

Regardless, it was up to us to keep our high standards and we've let them fall off a cliff. Definitely take heart at a win with 10 men but even the media fallout from that is 1-0 feels like a defeat and we need to take a full strength squad away next Thursday 

Going away to County will be interesting, the kinda game nobody can be arsed with, its on a shite pitch & it's supposed to be lashing down all weekend, the kinda game where we'll see if the players still have it in them to kick on

[ken 3]

For me recent signings just haven’t been good enough-

Simpson, zunga, lundstram - all poor 

Ofoborh- likely won’t see him for a long time ??

Sakala- I still have high hopes. 
 

So 1 out of 5, isn’t good enough. 

[16BlueSherbert90 19,223]

1 hour ago, The Dude said:

Too many guys going through the motions. Not buying this confidence stuff though. Players came back looking like they only needed to turn up to win games.

This in an absolute nutshell!

Agreed...it has absolutely nothing to do with confidence issues. They're taking the p*ss out of SG, the Club and Fans by being lazy, uncaring, disinterested sloths for reasons unknown to us. Winning last season should have given them a serious boost of moral and hungry for many many more trophies and medals.

They're embarrassing themselves. If they expect to go to bigger and better clubs they are going the wrong way about it. 

[RFC55 108,841]

1 minute ago, ken said:

For me recent signings just haven’t been good enough-

Simpson, zunga, lundstram - all poor 

Ofoborh- likely won’t see him for a long time ??

Sakala- I still have high hopes. 
 

So 1 out of 5, isn’t good enough. 

It's zungu ya mong and he's left 

[ken 3]

New signings need to come in with a desire and quality enough to push our guys but that hasn’t happened. 

[RFC55 108,841]

Just now, ken said:

New signings need to come in with a desire and quality enough to push our guys but that hasn’t happened. 

You also forgot Wright.

 

Good to see after 13 year as a member you've gained the confidence to post.

Get into the politics section mate and get avenging

[ken 3]

Yes Wright also looks good so 2 from 6 

[Nk89 1,289]

45 minutes ago, .Williamson. said:

Nonsense

Wright came on and pulled us over the line in the second half 

Goldson, Hagi, Wright, Bassey, Aribo all got on the front foot! Winning ball and driving forward with it, if they are overwhelmed by the pressure of the fans, it would be easy to sit back and play the simple ball in the 2nd half like Tavernier has done in all games this season.

[esquire8 42,465]

3 minutes ago, RFC55 said:

You also forgot Wright.

 

Good to see after 13 year as a member you've gained the confidence to post.

Get into the politics section mate and get avenging

 

[Nk89 1,289]

37 minutes ago, Bad Robot said:

Even though Tav’s pass set up Morelos ?

Yip he needs taken out the team, the armband is keeping him in the team nothing else

[MattyBlue 17,113]

I’d rather these performances come now than after Christmas.

Iv no doubt we will find form and a rhythm, it’s just painful and tedious to watch right now.  

[STEPPS BOY 73,890]

1 hour ago, tm91 said:

A lot of good points made in this thread, but to add two more:

1) Previously we either had 8 qualifier games against increasingly difficult opposition or an extended pre-season, which allowed us to hit the ground running and be fitter than most of our opponents. This time we haven't had that, and a number of players have had disrupted pre seasons. We just don't look fit and we haven't started at all.

2) The midfield isn't balanced. The way we play, we look at our best when Davis, Kamara and/or Jack can sit in there, covering for the full backs, controlling the game and pressing when required to keep the intensity up. Instead we've had Aribo, Lundstram, Arfield all playing there, so we don't have that solidity.

A few points made here - complacency, lack of fight, the issue of struggling to motivate ourselves after achieving a high - all these are relevant as well I think. There's no one simple answer.

Imo this is one of our biggest downfalls.

Bar a handful of games we shouldn’t be playing 2 CDM’s.

If Davis hasn’t got the legs to play in there with 2 more offensive/Creative midfielders then Kamara or Jack if he’s ever fit should be in there.

The other issue is we have a plethora of midfielders but apart from Kamara and a fully fit Jack the rest aren’t very good.

[NorthernLights 2,526]

1 hour ago, The Dude said:

The players shit the bed and believed their own hype.

It’s those intangible things for me. Leadership and being a winner. 55 means they’re technically winners but some people have that drive in them that it just means more. McGregor has it and I think Morelos has it. Think a lot of the others would like to win but don’t NEED to. Walter had winners

[Davidorrp 282]

Apart from a loss of form for some players, the big issue is still the balance in midfield for me and our over reliance on Davis.  He’s the senior player in the middle and everything we do goes thru him, and sadly he slows our game down too much, takes too many touches and is too fond of the square pass to the full backs. Which in turn means we predictably attack mostly from the fullbacks and crossing into a packed box. Give Davis his due, I thought he was very good in 2nd half last night. But in most games he doesn’t play thru the lines as much as he should and I think he’s just too cautious for that now. Perhaps an age thing. 
 

Put Jack and Kamara along side him and we have a defensive 3 rather than an offensive 3. Not even sure now what position Lundstrum is supposed to occupy or Bacuna! Who are they meant to be replacing? I had high hopes for maybe 2 or 3 big replacements in midfield this year which would take us up a level. We need energy and a dynamic approach in there. Just not seeing it at moment. Davis has been great for us but really feel we need to start phasing him out,  Until Bacuna yesterday, we really haven’t spent any money on midfield at all.
 

[Dan Deacon 55,168]

3 minutes ago, Nk89 said:

Yip he needs taken out the team, the armband is keeping him in the team nothing else

Needs one of them rotating armbands maybe?

[McEwan's Lager 30,522]

1 hour ago, RFC55 said:

We've had a broken pre season and our worst one in years.

Anyone who's played at any level knows how vital a settled pre season is for everyone, from a fitness point of view and from a team bonding point of view.

Weve had suspensions for 2 players who would play for us from the start. They're massive players for us and central to how we play.

 

It's not been the best start though. But I'm more confident as we go into games against teams who will play us rather than sit in 

I think our planning and preparation has to be questioned on this to an extent.

Nearly all the pre season / early season issues we faced we knew of well in advance.

We knew since November 2020 that Helander, Kamara, Barisic would all be at the Euros. We probably would have assumed that Ryan Jack would have been going then too.

We knew that Kamara and Roofe would be on a possible ban from April too. The suspensions were confirmed in May.

 

[SIRB_72 4,000]

3 minutes ago, Rangers_no1 said:

Helander got injured in December, we went on to win our next 6 games without him and lost one goal which was at the scum. He can't be used as a reasoning for the collapse after Dubai.

The slump was not in January, the only game we didn't win in January was Hearts away.

Morelos started in the 0-0 vs Aberdeen, 2-2 St Johnstone, 2-1 defeat at Killie and 1-0 defeat at home to Hamilton. Tav started all those games bar Aberdeen as well.

Squad still wasn't good enough. We were running on empty and had been found out with nothing extra to add in to the team. Our bench against Ross County was Foderingham, Halliday, Jones, Kamberi, Katic, Patterson & Kennedy.

Having a quality player out like  Helander might not show in 4 or 5 games but it will over time which it did. The amount of goals we started to leak kind of proved that.

Tav was rushed straight back into the team which may not have happened had an option like a first team ready Patterson been available. I'd argue he wasn't in early 2020.

Morelos was playing pish, no doubt, but Defoe was injured and then we were left with only Kamberi which compared to Roofe is night and day. 

 

 

[rangersross 6,530]

I think we needed to make some bolder decisions at the start of the window. We were all caught up in the excitement of 55 and ecstatic about the prospect of players staying on but, at the end of the day, we're fans and bound to be emotional, whereas the club's footballing department are effectively operating a business where there's no room for sentiment. In retrospect, some hard decisions should have been made, and that would have allowed us to refresh the squad with hungry, motivated players. Instead: it's hard not to see us as a team that's peaked and now in decline. 

[Cedrick 8,048]

20 minutes ago, Bad Robot said:

I normally laugh at his time wasting antics but last night he ripped the piss right out of it and I think only the subs stopped him getting a booking. AM for the bigger games with Jon for all others.

Same mate 👍🏻

[BlueThunder 8,453]

1 hour ago, The Beast said:

I'd been thinking about this as well. Do we only scout in Scotland and the English lower leagues?   There are players to be got out there in the wider world; the jap at the scum is one example.

They only have the Jap because of their manager’s knowledge of that league. Even so, he was roundly mocked on here as a terrible signing who wouldn’t cut it in Scotland. 

[STEPPS BOY 73,890]

1 minute ago, tm91 said:

Playing two CDM's is how Gerrard tries to keep us defensively solid while having two attacking full backs. The gamble is that the full-backs should be bringing more offensively than we lose by playing two defensive midfielders. When it works like last season, we can rip teams apart while conceding very few goals. When it doesn't, we look devoid of ideas, slow and sluggish.

I wouldn't necessary say playing two CDM's is our biggest downfall so much as it is that Gerrard is very reluctant to move away from his preferred set-up when the players that are required for it to work aren't available. We need to be far more flexible than we actually are when we don't have Jack or Kamara available. 

If we had a proper mobile CDM in there we wouldn’t need two.

We have over 65 percent possession in majority of games, whether the full backs are attacking or not we shouldn’t have 2 CDMS and 2 centre halves behind ball.

3 CDMS at Dundee Hibs was fucking ludicrous and i guarantee he does same against a tarrier team flung together in past 6 weeks and away to Alashkert.

[AGM_72 3,631]

The biggest worry for me with Tav is that he seems a yard off it. Isn't as involved as he was last season, doesn't seem to be able to link with the midfield to get in behind or create space for the player in front of him. Even when he has defensive lapses, or when his set piece delivery/general delivery is poor - his link up play is usually pretty sound but that's gone completely right now. 

[They Gnu 11,553]

4 minutes ago, Rangers_no1 said:

Many clubs were in a similar boat to us. 

We have played 11 games now including friendlies, there is no excuse for the performances of the likes of Goldson, Kent, Davis, Tav, Lundstram etc who never had a disrupted summer.

If it's solely about fitness, then Gerrard and the team have messed it up. 

What’s Davis done wrong?

[BlueVanguard 6,621]

someone was saying we are so predictable last night and it was a poster with a lot of posts and that i agree. I honestly really worry for us this season the signs so far give me the fucking fear. 
 

Regardless of the negative thinking from me I'll sit and endure it waiting and hoping to be proved wrong. Hopefully once the window closes and Goldsons contract is sorted we can crack on

[RFC55 108,841]

Just now, BlueVanguard said:

someone was saying we are so predictable last night and it was a poster with a lot of posts and that i agree. I honestly really worry for us this season the signs so far give me the fucking fear. 
 

Regardless of the negative thinking from me I'll sit and endure it waiting and hoping to be proved wrong. Hopefully once the window closes and Goldsons contract is sorted we can crack on

Wtf, why does that matter