Kilmarnock 1-0 Rangers: End of days

Sometimes the most concerning thing about a result, is how far from the final whistle you can see the result coming. I think it was about 25 minutes in that I put in my notes "we will lose this" but I think part of me was still hoping Clement would see what I was seeing and change things up. But I should have known by now, Clement isn't a proactive manager, in fact he's barely a reactive manager, he's closer to an inactive manager.

But yes, Rangers limped to a one nil defeat at the hands of Kilmarnock at Rugby Park. I wasn't dismayed with the line-up before the game and I had asked for a few things that we needed to see.

The first thing was midfield rotations, to give credit to the team, I think we tried to do that. For the first quarter of the game, Diomande was deeper with Barron pushing up when we had the ball, to open the space up to play through. Bajrami and Lawrence also had license to move all around the park to open up the Killie midfield. It didn't work amazingly well, but it was a positive tactical change and good to see. However, by about the 30th minute, we'd abandoned this approach and had gone back to static positions with the ball going absolutely nowhere fast.

The second thing was a good performance in general play from Dessers. We really didn't see that. His first half was horrendous and even though he came closest to scoring in the second with an attempt from a corner, it wasn't good enough. We've all seen him choose the wrong option on the break and the stat about his 11 touches being the lowest on the pitch in the first half. It just feels like he's really struggling at the moment, and it's probably only making it worse by continuing to start him. Igamane eventually came on and ran the channels well, which made me think he could have came on out wide and looked to support Dessers. But that would require some kind of adaptability from the manager.

I thought if we had a moment that summed up our attacking play it was near the end of the first half, the ball came out to Diomande on the edge of our area after a Killie set piece, he had time to look forward and maybe launch a counter attack with men in front of him. We know he has the quality to bring a ball down and play. But no, he simply smashed the ball up the park as hard as he could.

That moment points to my core belief around this team at the moment, the players don't actually believe they will score, they don't think they can play better football, so why would they? I think it's pretty obvious whose job it is to instil that belief and give the players the tools to succeed.

That's our attacking play covered, for our defending, it was a regression to the mean, results catching up with performances. We looked extremely vulnerable all game, Butland dropped the ball in the first half and had to make a brilliant reaction save, Killie scored a tight offside goal with what was a free header from a set piece. It's a pattern we've seen before with this team, we huff and puff to create a half chance from 20 yards, then the opposition go long and they are bearing down on our goalkeeper. I'd long given up faith in us getting a goal, so when Watkins held off Souttar to poke past Butland I barely reacted.

It just felt like yet another away game under Philippe Clement when the result looks set in stone long before the final whistle. The main reason for that is the refusal to actually chase a game properly, when we beat Hearts with a late equaliser and winner early on in Clement's tenure many felt it was a sign of his standards as a manager. I'm not sure where those standards have gone now, because it looked very much like as a team we just accepted defeat yesterday, and the manager must have too, given he decided to keep faith in the same set up and approach rather than risking it to get a win.

I don't think I can say much more on this game to be honest. Not sure I have the energy to address what was yet another ridiculous post-match presser from our manager, which adds to a growing list.

On a side note, I went to see Rangers Women play Hibs round the corner from me. That was meant to be a palette cleanser, instead we scrambled to a draw with a late equaliser after doing not much of anything throughout the game. They must have watched the men's team for inspiration.

Try and have a good week everyone, forget about Rangers until... Thursday, sigh.