Rangers 0-1 Queens Park: Arachnophobia

Morning, I think everyone will forgive me for omitting the "Good" sentiment on this occasion. How can I call a morning after such a loss, good?

I've seen quite a few shocking results in my day. I think there's two types of cup defeat for Rangers and Celtic, outside of losing to each other.

There's the "loss to a lesser team but you're in the same league". Lots of examples of this for Rangers. Both Aberdeen losses in Gerrard's first season (2018/19). The Hibs league cup semi final defeat after Gerrard's departure (2021/22). Those results were a "shock" but after the initial hubbub died down they didn't live long in the memory.

Then there's the "loss to a team so catastrophically bad that it will appear for years to come on Scottish football YouTube channels and Twitter feeds." Slightly more wordy that one, but you know exactly what that result looks like. How many times have we all watched Celtic losing to Clyde? Or the Ross County (then in league one) defeat with the fans losing their minds outside the ground? Super-caley-go-ballistic-Celtic-are-atrocious?

Sadly yesterday's result falls firmly in the latter category. And rightly so, we will see it everywhere for the rest of our lives. Philippe Clement turned a routine home game against a second tier team into a historic result. He really loves ending long standing records doesn't he?

I had no issues with the team selection. It's easy to talk about rotating too heavily, but that wasn't the case. There was enough quality in that line up to blow the Spiders away in the first half.

Instead we witnessed one of the worst halves in living memory. Almost every positive Rangers attacking performance this season has been a result of individual players performing well and finding ways to score past teams. Yesterday was another example of a game in which the manager hoped individual quality would shine through. Instead, those individuals struggled to perform and we had nothing else.

The manager tried to change things by introducing Dessers and Raskin. But the approach didn't change, we got the ball from our own third into the middle third and hoped that the players would find some way to get into the oppositions area.

Queens Park aren't some hidden gem of a team that have flown under the radar. Callum Davidson isn't the next Pep Guardiola. We simply didn't ask them any questions. They were organised and did the basics well, and that was honestly all that was needed.

They had a few chances after growing in confidence, seeing Rangers profligacy in terms of creating chances probably helped. They took one of them, I'll not waste my time criticising Kelly extensively, but I was disappointed to see him beaten from there.

So we had let two thirds of the game pass us by. Would we see a response now? The answer is no. Clement made subs without really making changes. Which is probably his signature move by this stage.

When Tavernier stepped up to take the late penalty, I knew he would miss. I can't think of many important penalties Tav has missed for Rangers, but ofcourse he made an exception to really seal the defeat.

I'd picked out Calum Ferrie as an excellent keeper pre-game. And as much as Rangers didn't create many chances of note, he was brilliant when called upon and sealed the deal with that penalty save.

When the final whistle went, the fact that our season was effectively over really sunk in. This result makes Clement's pre-match comments about believing in overcoming the points deficit in the league even more stark. It's clear that we have a manager living in his own world when it comes to how this season is going.

Credit to those who asked post-match if he would be tendering his resignation to the board. His response was typically laughable and honestly I'm not sure I can address it in detail or I'll need to phone in sick for work after collapsing into apoplexy.

The main thing is, it's clear that the incumbent Rangers manager is not good enough. We've known this for months. I think most fans have contented themselves that he will be gone in the summer. Or atleast, many have certainly clung to that hope when things have been bad.

The board have deluded themselves that this underperformance comes from the injuries and squad issues this season. But there's no hiding from a result like yesterday, when given home advantage and a massive quality deficit in his favour, Philippe Clement failed to find a way to make this Rangers team perform.

I don't believe this board want to take responsibility and sack the manager. Because it means they have to have some kind of plan in place to replace him. I expect they will hide behind the external review of the club Patrick Stewart has talked about. No decisions can be made till that's over!

Unfortunately this post has ended up a bit rambly. But I think it's hard to talk about the issues in the club without jumping all over the place. I hope everyone tries to enjoy their week, maybe take a break from football?