Rangers 2-1 Motherwell: Same old Rangers, always somewhat deflating

As I had thought might be the case, I was unable to watch yesterdays game and had to follow it on my phone while out and about. It's fair to say I didn't get a complete picture of the game as a result. But as I hinted at yesterday, I had a man on the inside at Hampden, that man is my friend Jack. He has kindly provided a writeup of the game and some great pictures for the article.

The view from Hampden park:

Heading to Ibrox…I mean Hampden today, I had a far weirder feeling than most times I take the journey up the M77 to Glasgow for the football. So many different factors ranging from playing at Hampden for the foreseeable, to mixed messages between Clement and the board and finally scraping a draw away to Kiev meant that the majority of fans didn’t have any real enthusiasm playing against Motherwell. However, we are loyal to the very end and we cheered on the boys in blue no matter what.

As soon as I arrived at Hampden today the line up went live and mixed emotions surrounded us all, Propper finally gets his debut and we see Cerny starting as well…the other side of that coin also has Wright starting but Adam’s went on for long enough about why he isn’t fit to wear the jersey.

Many fans I think wanted the team to be on the pressing front right from the get go and try kill off Motherwell early, and it certainly seemed the case with how we started - a refreshing change of pace to what we saw against Hearts and Kiev. There was pace, tempo, dare I say even some intensity amongst the ranks which saw us have a goal disallowed after taking a free kick too quickly and Wright and Dessers having shots cleared off the line. The opening did come not so long after where Yilmaz (who absolutely dominated the left hand side in the first half, more of this performance please!) swung a cross ball in deep where it came to the late arriving head of Diomande, who cushioned it down to Dessers who slots it home for his opening goal in the league.

I made the mistake in thinking that this would be a walk in the park for Rangers as not long after that a Motherwell player gets a ball across the box, no communication between our back line or goalkeeper saw Propper deflect the ball into our own bottom right corner(following a light touch from Souttar) - not an ideal opening to your Rangers career to say the least. We did however respond in exquisite fashion as another new signing Cerny cuts inside from the right wing, tees up the ball with his left foot and curls it into the top left corner to send us into half time 2-1 up.

Then the second half came, oh the second half, what should have been a have your cake and eat it day turned into a game where we had to dig in and grind out 3 points (how often have Rangers fans said this?). Motherwell wanted to take the game to Rangers and take the game to us they did, we had no answers. The team lost all fluidity when the first set of subs was made, mainly the loss of Cerny seemed to be the domino that allowed the rest to fall. Aside from a Sterling header just over the bar and Cyriel Dessers skying it as well, we had next to no real offering of a sight at goal. Motherwell on the other hand made Butland perform one of his trade mark spectacular saves to keep Rangers in the game. At least the game stayed 2-1 and we came away with three points.

I think there is a lot of takeaways from the game:

* Cerny when fully fit is going to be huge for us.

* Dessers is getting better every game, there is no denying it and his goal scoring continues.

* Wright should still never wear the jersey again.

* Tav and Lawrence at points are just too slow for the game here, they were lucky to have cover from other players at points.

* How fit/unfit can Danilo be?

We go on to Tuesday where we play the second leg of our 1-1 tie against Kiev and if we play like we did the first half I am confident we will go through, however we also may play like we did the second half and in that case we can kiss that £4million and soon after £40million good bye and say good bye to any future signings. But for now, we can at least say we got 3 points and got up the road.

Thanks to Jack for that, he said it's unlikely to be a regular thing, so hopefully I won't miss many games in future.

I'm very happy that Cerny was trusted to start and clearly he's going to be very capable when he's on the park for Rangers. The lack of intensity in the second half could be a sign of the fitness of the team as alluded to by Clement a few times this season.

Cerny had already shown a lot of promise with his positioning and desire to get forward whenever we have the ball, that will put him in good stead with the support, especially if he continues to finish like that. I liked what he had to say about his goal too.

Aside from that it's good to get a few league goals and get a win at Hampden ahead of the big game this week. I will be there so there will be no need for a guest writer this time. Let's all enjoy the 3 points and have a nice Sunday everyone.