Rangers 1-0 Hibs: The Adventures of Tom Lawrence

Before the game yesterday, I actually felt some of the excitement for watching Rangers return, seems crazy I know. But after a few decent games part of me thought we'd continue to see that increase in performance against Hibs. Even the release of the rotated line-up didn't quell that fire, indeed I was excited to see Igamane up top, despite the lack of Bajrami.

I think it was maybe 20 minutes in, I looked down at my notes and realised I'd taken one in that entire period. The note was "no one seems to know what they're meant to be doing?". Sadly it seemed like we were back to our early season attacking patterns, or lack thereof.

Everyone was excited to see Igamane, but he struggled to get into the game as it felt to me like we weren't really trying to play to his strengths. Our left side looked a lot less functional with McCausland instead of Bajrami, I don't think that's necessarily the Northern Irishman's fault, as they are totally different players so how could anyone expect them to perform similarly in that role?

Hibs sat in a deep block and were organised in their defending. They tried to frustrate us and they succeeded for most of the game, we didn't create any chances of note in the first half really. But thankfully, we had already made the breakthrough.

We continually worked the ball out to the left without much success throughout the first half, Lawrence had moved out there to create an overload, he didn't receive the ball initially but stayed in the left pocket with no Hibs player picking him up. McCausland found him with a clever reverse ball, Lawrence stepped inside and curled a beautiful finish in the top corner of the Hibs goal. He was flagged offside initially but the goal was given after a lengthy VAR check.

So the hope was that we could kick on after getting the opener, we still had 15 minutes of the half to go. But, no such luck, we continued to huff and puff when we had the ball and seemed to invite Hibs onto us with our line dropping in on occasion. Hibs took these opportunities to endeavour forward and eventually won a penalty on the stroke of half time, courtesy of a John Souttar handball given after a VAR check. Certainly a penalty by the letter of the law, although they always look very harsh to me.

I expected us to go in level, which no one could have argued with given how poor we were in front of goal. But Jack Butland had other ideas, he got down to his right to save comfortably after Kukharevych went for a stutter on his run up and tried to roll the ball in. It looked easy but you have to give a lot of credit to Butland for keeping his cool and reading the stutter in the run up, especially given the nerves in the stadium. For me it's a top save and hopefully a sign of a continued return to form for the English shot-stopper.

The miss seemed to flatten the Hibs players, the half time whistle blew and every Rangers fan knew we'd got away with one. We had to improve in the second half. Clearly Clement recognised this too, he made two half time subs with Bajrami and Dowell replacing McCausland and Raskin respectively.

Clearly those subs were meant to inject some life into us, I thought Bajrami looked good overall and he really tried to get us going. On Kieran Dowell, the human equivalent of those portions of chips and cheese where they put unmelted slices of cheese on the top, he seemed to somehow slow us down even more.

I felt like throughout the first half, Raskin and Barron didn't make a great partnership as they both wanted to do similar things, so when one would go deep to get the ball off the centre backs, the other would loiter in a kind of 8 position in midfield. It hindered our build-up in the middle of the park, and I think really shows why both benefit from having Diomande start alongside them in the pivot.

On paper, Dowell's skillset should have improved our ability to progress the ball through the middle of the park. We saw last season against Motherwell away and St Johnstone at home that Dowell is happy to receive the ball and carry it from deep while evading pressure. I'm not sure exactly what has happened to Dowell since those games (injuries aside), but he has lost all resemblance of anything resembling positivity on the ball. Time and time again he picked up the ball with forward options on, often times without even being under real pressure, and he chose to pass it back and put his teammates under pressure.

There was one particular sequence in which Jefte and Bajrami combined brilliantly inside our half to evade the pressure of 3 Hibs players, knocked it inside to Dowell who had about 10 yards available to turn into but decided to stop the ball and knock it back to Propper who was trying to advance up the pitch. That particular piece of play culminated with us conceding a throw in our own half.

The performances of McCausland off the left and Dowell in midfield make it clear just how much we could have benefitted from getting the left winger (Edozie) and deep lying midfielder (Esposito) over the line in the window. We know Clement likes to rotate after European games and he played a right winger off the left and an empty jersey in midfield yesterday.

I think given the lack of quality personnel in the squad, it's going to be hard to break the pattern we are in, especially if Clement maintains his rotational policy.

There wasn't much to say for the second half of the game, the Hibs keeper made a good save from Dessers late on and Hibs missed a great headed chance themselves. Barron was the main positive again as we eventually made it over the line with all 3 points and our clean sheet intact.

Although it's no doubt going to fall on deaf ears, I think it's pretty obvious that as a team we need to have a consistent first eleven starting to get results. Diomande was missing with a knock which isn't ideal, we really need him back so our midfield can look functional again. I don't see us showing any kind of consistency until we get to January and hopefully make some signings to reduce the load on Barron/Bajrami/Diomande.

Clement wasn't pleased with the award of the penalty, to say the least. I feel like there's better fights to pick than that one, but the manager clearly felt it was worth making the point.

It feels like we are back to not knowing which Rangers we will see in any given match, for me that can only fall on the manager. You can't be disappointed with 4 wins in a row with 4 clean sheets, but I think we can be disappointed that there doesn't seem to be much consistency in the performances that achieved those results.

Much to ponder ahead of our first Europa league home game against Lyon on Thursday. Hope everyone has a good week and I'll be back with a match preview then.