Rangers 1-0 Hearts: Cure for insomnia

I'd be lying if I said I was surprised by the way the game went. I was actually most surprised when we showed a bit of endeavour early on and got the goal. We had the ball down the left with Jefte, he played it into Bajrami who played it across the box after a little shuffle. And I will say, the main reason I was surprised was that we had actually committed to an attack with bodies in the box, I count 5 Rangers players in the box. The ball travelled to the back post where our Captain shot first time, it hit Dessers in the six yard box, and suddenly we were a goal up.

I liked the way we really went for it with this early goal and I thought okay, are we seeing something new here? The answer to that, dear reader, was no. We immediately returned to the kind of turgid football we've become used to at home. I will say that we maybe saw a bit more of a balanced midfield with a 433 shape instead of the 4231 we have become used to. And I think that is good to see, but it wasn't matched by the desire to commit bodies into the box that we saw in those first 6 minutes.

While we seemed to have some balance, atleast in the first half, it wasn't the key to some fluent attacking performance. The other major chance for us in the first period was Vaclav Cerny being played in by a great ball from Barron, but he was at a poor angle and his right footed shot was saved by Craig Gordon.

We'd slipped very much back into our familiar ways of looking ponderous on the ball and shaky at the back. In the first half this culminated with a short John Souttar back pass, seized upon by the Hearts forward and requiring an intervention from Butland to keep us ahead.

Eventually the half time whistle came and it's actually difficult to stress just how much this game could have been exchanged with any of our other home league performances aside from Ross County. I was sitting at half time again thinking "we haven't built on our lead, I really hope we can improve in the second half". Ofcourse, that was really wishful thinking.

My brother worked in football and was told by someone that managed in Belgium that Philippe Clements style can best be described as "realistic". That was when he was appointed as Rangers manager last year. At the time I was a bit confused as to exactly what that meant. Now I feel like I know exactly what it means, and I'm cursed with that "realistic" style every bloody week.

Oh we have a second half to cover, fantastic, got about 4 notes on that and I don't think any of them are positive. We started the half in nightmarish fashion, Vargas was sent through on goal for Hearts and hit the post. I think this half really exposed something that we've known all season, Rangers can't be a top side with Tavernier starting. I've always been a big Tav defender, but physically he's been finished since the end of last season. Yet he's still asked to get high up the pitch to try win the ball early, and is nearly always bypassed with ease. I lost count of the amount of times Hearts had acres of space on our left with Tav caught up the park.

I will say that while we lack any real kind of attacking fluency it almost doesn't matter who we play at full back. But I'm bemused as to why Clement doesn't give himself the best chance by playing one of the more physically robust options in Sterling and Kasanwirjo.

For a long spell in the second half a Hearts equaliser felt inevitable. We seemed to get worse as the game went on and Hearts really grew into it. I felt like we needed some kind of change in the front 4, maybe it was going to be Lovelace so we had some pace with Hearts committing men forward? Or Danilo for Dessers to give us something different upfront? No no, don't be so silly! We brought Dujon Sterling on for Connor Barron in midfield.

I was a bit speechless when I saw this, why the manager of the superior team, playing at home, a goal up, should feel like he needs to make such a negative substitution is frustrating to say the least. Clement made a change that was about trying not to lose control, not about getting back control of the game. And I think that says alot about his mentality as a manager and why he's not the right fit for Rangers long term. And the reaction of the Ibrox crowd tells you that the fans feel the same way.

Predictably we actually struggled to retain the ball more once we exchanged a midfielder who likes to help move the ball around for one that only really comes into play when we don't have the ball.

Kasanwirjo was also introduced for Tav and proceeded to have his worst minutes in a Rangers jersey, in my opinion. He played like he'd never seen Vaclav Cerny before and had no idea what he was going to do on or off the ball. Which is incredible given he played behind him with no issues just 4 days previously.

So with all these changes, the game was still getting away from us. We proceeded to bring on Danilo for Dessers, which I have no issues with, but it should have happened much sooner than it did. The manager then decided to introduce Ross McCausland and Kieron Dowell for Bajrami and Cerny.

I actually think those latter changes really irked me more than Sterling for Barron. It clearly signalled an intent to really kill the game in all senses of the word. Why Dowell should get any minutes when he will clearly be booted in the summer is beyond me, and if those minutes are out wide then surely Lovelace should be getting them? McCausland struggles on the left and doesn't really help us maintain width while also not being great at coming inside on the ball.

It just felt like the only way we could react to the game was to try and protect the goal we had, there was never any real intent to add to it and the team can really feel that on the pitch. It just feels like we really are going round in circles and it won't stop until Clement resigns, cause we aren't gonna be sacking him any time soon.

The manager gave us another politicians answer about the game and performance, to be expected. Balogun was keen to point out that we made it hard for ourselves. But I'll be amazed if it leads to any kind of change.

Have a nice international break, will be good to get away from Rangers I think.