Rangers 1-2 Motherwell: Back to square -1

Morning everyone, 6 days was all it took for the optimism around Barry Ferguson's interim appointment to dissipate. Although as many readers will recall, I wasn't actually very optimistic to begin with.

I'm running out of verbs to describe the ways Rangers can lose games. I think I've used "slumped to defeat against X" atleast 5 times this season. Maybe "floundered" would be better to describe yesterday's game. Rangers floundered to a third home defeat in a row with a 2-1 loss to Motherwell.

One of the comments I made about the game on Wednesday was that I didn't think playing in that style would be sustainable over a run of league games. Yesterday was an example of why that's true.

In terms of set up it was the same as the team that started the second half on Wednesday. Ridvan was in for Nsiala with Tavernier playing centre back. I wasn't surprised to see Balogun and Sterling return to the squad on the bench. But I was surprised to see Nsiala completely dropped. There's a number of reasons we shouldn't have dropped Nsiala off the face of the earth after Wednesday.

From a purely practical sense, it's clear that neither of the returning defenders had a full 90 minutes in them, so in the case of injury or subbing someone for being terrible (spoiler: we had to do this), we'd have to put their lack of match fitness to the test. It felt like a big statement move from Barry, although how much of a statement can you really make from dropping a young player who is low on confidence?

Motherwell went for a 352 shape rather than the 343 they deployed on Wednesday. Honestly they essentially copied St Mirren's game plan from their recent victory at Ibrox. And why wouldn't they, Clement couldn't figure out a tactical solution, so pose the same question to the new management team.

In my post match blog from that defeat I talked about some potential solutions such as changing to a 4321 shape. I don't see myself as some kind of managerial genius, that's just formation 101. The kind of thing you'd learn in your early coaching badges. If I know that, the manager of Rangers should.

So you can imagine my absolute horror as I watched the team struggle to play against this same game plan. The managers solution? Shouting and telling them to play it forward. Absolutely incredible, why didn't they think of that?

The managers post match interview was scathing, he questioned the players commitment and understanding of the standards required to play for Rangers. There was a time when getting players fired up and ready to die for the badge was enough to win any game of football at Rangers. But it's 2025, football has moved on. You need to give the players the tools to win. I don't think the management team did that at any point.

To go over the first half, the players looked bewildered as to how to play through the Motherwell press, they struggled to stop the Steelmen getting the ball into wide areas, and once again struggled to deal with balls in behind.

The first goal was completely of our own making. Butland caught the ball from a Well set piece, tried to get us going by rolling it out to Cyriel Dessers. With space to gallop into, the striker instead took a heavy touch and was dispossessed. With the team caught in transition, the ball was played forward to a Motherwell forward, his weak shot was palmed feebly by Butland into the patch of Armstrong, who slid the ball home. The flag went up, but after a VAR check it was clear that the goal was onside.

I've had to speak about Jack Butland a lot this season, very little of it has been me praising him. He's sold the jersey again here, sadly it's really not surprising anymore. Not selling him in the summer is looking like a worse decision game by game.

How did we react to going a goal down? As you'd expect, the team continued to try create without much joy. Motherwell played round our press with so much ease it was almost laughable. That's how they got their second goal, a good passing move got them into our third. Jefte continued his terrible form by completely switching off and tucking in behind Propper, leaving Sparrow with acres of space on the right to control and finish.

No one was pleased by the first half. Boos rained down on the tram after another dismal display. The game wasn't unsalvageable by any means, for me there were a few players that seriously underperformed, Jefte, Propper and Hagi maybe the 3 most culpable. But tactically, Motherwell had our system totally sussed and just like the St Mirren game, a tactical change was needed if we wanted to start playing any better.

Barry rung the changes at half time with Propper, Igamane and Hagi hooked for Balogun, Lawrence and Bajrami. I eagerly awaited a change of shape to counter the Motherwell game plan. Instead we went to more of a 4411 with Lawrence behind Dessers. No real change of shape beyond that. You could absolutely make the case for any of the players being subbed on a performance basis. But the fact is, our manager watched that first half and decided that no change to the approach or game plan was needed. Philippe Clement did that many times, and the fans never chose to blame the players over his terrible set up and tactical approach.

Motherwell shifted to a deeper defensive block for the second half, with more emphasis on a counter attacking approach. They backed themselves against our minimal threat going forward.

As a result we had much more of the ball, with less of a press to play through. That's the kind of thing that any manager should relish.

As for the performances of the subs, Balogun was stronger than Propper in the duel and helped us win more of the balls in our own third. Bajrami didn't give the ball away as much as Hagi, but didn't really solve any of the issues on that side given he's not wildly different from Hagi in terms of physical profile. Lawrence was beyond useless, he represented the only "tactical" change as he was meant to link things up as a number 10 and get beyond Dessers to get behind Motherwell. He did neither of those things, I've never seen a number 10 go out of his way to avoid the ball as much as the Welshman did.

I think you could have very easily made the case for subbing him back off again. But presumably the manager is only interested in publicly punishing the younger players.

Incredibly, Diomande was chosen as a player to make way. Once again calling into question if our interim manager is actually watching the game. Diomande is possibly the only player who played at anything over a 5. He must have had flashbacks to playing under Clement as he was asked to win the ball, beat a man, progress the ball, create and get a goal himself.

When Danilo was introduced for Diomande I really laughed. It called to mind watching England in Euro 2016, a forgettable tournament, but when chasing games Roy Hodgson would eventually have all 4 of his strikers on the pitch. And with no creative players available, they would never see the ball in the final third. That's what it felt like towards the end of the game, all the forwards on the pitch with no actual plan for how to get the ball to them.

Dessers pulled a goal back after a Motherwell mistake at the back, presumably they felt sorry for us. He should have had an equaliser, which would have been completely undeserved. A long ball was played forward, it eluded Danilo and the defender and found Dessers who deftly lobbed the keeper. The flag was raised quickly, but despite watching it back about 5/6 times, I can't see the touch from Danilo that would make Dessers offside. I'm not sure how VAR could, but the goal remained chalked off.

Another really obvious issue for our build up had been Ridvan Yilmaz. For the entire game he struggled to get the ball to Cerny as he was forced to come inside onto his stronger foot. Everyone could see a change needed to be made to allow Tav to go on that side. Instead it took until the 82nd minute to introduce Dujon Sterling who was clearly not fit at all. He struggled to handle the 10 minutes or so he was given. His inclusion in the squad over Nsiala was nothing short of ludicrous.

We laboured for 90 minutes here, make no mistake. Players looked lost facing such a well organised team, and the management had no solution behind throwing on a bunch of attacking players and simply hoping for the best.

Fenerbahce could be embarrassing at this rate. Jose Mourinho will be licking his lips at the prospect of facing such a clueless tactical set up.

That's all for today. I plan to avoid any more football for the rest of the weekend. It's going to be hard to get any enjoyment from the rest of this season.