Rangers’ love affair with Europa League Thursdays was unceremoniously brought crashing down by a ruthless Lyon side who exposed underlying weaknesses that many fans secretly feared were lurking under the surface, despite a recent upturn in form and an excellent result vs Malmo.
Philippe Clement was criticised earlier in the season for suggesting we might not see the best of his team until October or November but after strong wins against Dundee and Malmo, optimism had cautiously started to rise with some perhaps wondering if the Belgian was right all along.
Well, after Thursday night, let’s just say that the jury is still very much out.
Frustratingly Rangers started well and could really have been 2-0 up with chances for Tavernier and, more glaringly, Cerny. And at this level you always feel that you simply cannot pass up such opportunities, particularly when they would put you ahead in the game. So it proved.
Lyon in their first meaningful attack forced a strong Butland save and then duly converted from the immediate passage of play that followed and despite the fact that we would equalise it would not be enough as we simply proved too soft defensively and too easy to play through with Lacazette scoring a beauty just before half-time.
Without going blow-by-blow through the events of the game we witnessed some familiar problems that will unfortunately be exposed by better teams unless we change something. Up front, nothing stuck. In midfield, we were dragged about and pulled apart. And in defence we were simply woeful.
It wasn’t all bad of course as we could in theory have been a goal or two up by the time we eventually equalised on the balance of chances created but as the game went on we faded and Lyon’s quality, particularly in attack, told and it became clear that this current Rangers team are not capable of competing at this level like we perhaps did before.
This is a squad in transition with the wage bill being cut and the average age brought down. Fair enough. We don’t have players as good as Alfredo Morelos, Steven Davis, Calvin Bassey, etc. Again, fair enough. But with that in mind, can the manager do more to set these players up to succeed? Well, that was pretty much asked of him in the post-match press conference and his answer was less than convincing.
If we revisit the early Gerrard era, a time when our players were equally inexperienced at this level it should be remembered, then I think you can see a clear difference in approach. Against Rapid Wien we played with a high and intense press, Daniel Candeias being a particular asset for this. But then against Porto, who dominated possession, we slid into a mid-block, controlled the space and restricted them to virtually no chances in 90 minutes of football.
The point? Well, I guess what I’m saying is that Gerrard looked at his players and found a gameplan and a set-up to suit them and give them the best chance of success and that the strategy was obvious and visible. The same contrasting approaches could also be seen against Celtic as we won games against them in different ways. Can we honestly be confident that the same is happening now?
Too often I’m not too sure what our approach is meant to be. Now, I am not a tactical guru by any stretch of the imagination but even as a layman I could see what we tried to do under previous managers. Right now however we neither press or settle into a compact, mid-block. We seem caught in a halfway house which fails to pressure opponents adequately or deny them space further up the pitch. And that’s a bad combination especially against quality opposition.
Domestically we will get away with these things mostly on account of having slightly better players than most of the league. But if we look at Celtic, we look at Lyon, our team falls considerably short not just in terms of ability but in terms of how we try to manage the games.
Jack Butland rather honestly admitted after the game that perhaps a ‘different approach’ was needed. Whether that was a veiled dig at how we were set up by the manager or more of a throwaway comment covering the on-pitch performance in general is anyone’s guess, but maybe it just hints that the players too feel like something has to change in these types of games.
This season we simply must see signs of improvement. We have seen a linear regression over the previous two campaigns with results and performances trending downwards. Of course recruitment is a huge part of that problem and predates Clement’s time at Rangers but the bar was so low when he came into the club that he simply must prove himself capable of raising it.
Rangers’ form since 1st March has been alarming having won only 13 of our 27 competitive games in that time. The purple patch we enjoyed upon the manager’s arrival is looking more and more like the outlier, just as it did for both Beale and Gio before him. And while allowances have to be made for the turnover of players, the age of some signings, it’s not sustainable for a Rangers manager to win so few games.
The underlying figures aren’t much better and, for those who believe in such things, confirm the issues we face as a team. Our xGD (expected goal difference – the difference between expected goals scored and expected goals conceded) currently sits at 0.87 in contrast with Celtic’s 1.66 (source: @TheGersReport).
An xGD of less than 1.00 is weak and indicates that many games are far more in the balance than any of us would like. For comparison, as of December last year, our xGD was 1.55, a staggering 78% better than the current season’s. And while stats cannot tell the full story in isolation, I think in this case they are aligned with the “eye-test” and what we are witnessing on the park.
Games against Lyon and other big European teams won’t define *this* season however Thursday was a humbling reminder as to how far we have fallen from even the earlier Gerrard era. At great expense we have gone further and further backwards and while board members can talk about ‘alignment’ with the manager and Nils Koppen, the only thing that matters is that the results of that are borne out on the pitch.
It has been a small sample size so far this season when we look at stats, results or performances. There have been some lows, like Lyon, and there have been some highs, like Malmo. But what we must do now is string together a consistent set of results domestically and, more than that, provide the performances that give us fans the confidence that this project is working and moving forward.
Right now there’s a lack of faith in the club, the manager, the squad or some combination of the three. And in football the only talking that matters is that which happens on the park. So with his pledge that the best of his team would soon be seen, Clement must now deliver the types of performances and results that we expect.
Clement was overly keen to highlight Lyon’s spending advantage in the build-up to the game midweek but by his own logic he is confirming that we should be comfortably beating 10 of the 11 Premiership teams consistently over the course of a season. And of course we should.
You can talk about this team being a project but when your wage bill alone is many multiples of the entire turnover of your opponents, excuses simply won’t wash and the fans don’t want to hear them. So starting on Sunday we must embark on a strong run domestically in a month which sees us visit both Rugby Park and Pittodrie.
Fans might just be able to understand, if not quite accept, a few Euro defeats against richer clubs if we can demonstrate that outside of that this team are trending upwards and improving. Gerrard was given time to success for the sole reason that we could see forward steps being taken and, if the manager and the club want the same patience, that patience has got to be earned.
Put simply, it’s time to deliver.
Four Lads Had A Dream 