St Mirren 2-1 Rangers: Results, meet performances

Afternoon all, I'm sure we're all reeling after what we had hoped would be a relaxing boxing day capped off with a Rangers win, ended in ignominious defeat.

A defeat of this nature has been coming for a while, even in that mini run of league form we were trying the same things and executing them more effectively, rather than improving the style and approach.

Last game, I felt we really lacked ideas and had Dundee stepping up to help us make the breakthrough. Last night's performance was similar but unlike Dundee, St Mirren stuck to their task and went for the kill once they smelt blood.

On the lineup, I was quite surprised by the amount of rotation. Clement set us up in that 4231 shape instead of the 442 that's been getting results in the league. I wonder if he felt like us creating chances late on, on the counter in the 4231 against Dundee was a sign to return to that shape? I hope not, because it's really worrying that a manager would read into us creating chances against a team that's 1-0 down as some kind of solution.

Raskin was dropped to the bench as he was a booking away from suspension. It's easy to say in hindsight but for me he's been our most consistent performer this season. You don't risk losing that in what looks like a tricky away game on paper, no one else can play that 6 role effectively. Barron came in and continued his recent poor form.

Bajrami also came in for Danilo. The Albanian really struggled for me, I feel like he's suffering from the lack of a defined role in the team. The positive news was Balogun recovering enough to play alongside Sterling at the back. Typically we then lost him to another injury during the game.

I was hoping that Rangers would prove me wrong and we'd come out firing but it was such a ponderous first half performance. When Butland made yet another error of judgment this season and gave away a penalty by smashing through the St Mirren forward. It capped off a poor first half for the team, but I can't even begin to understand why Butland has decided he needs to get there so badly. There were men on the cover and it just looks really poor overall for Butland.

St Mirren converted the penalty and we were down 1-0. We made it to the half time whistle at a goal down. But we certainly didn't look like scoring, St Mirren had a good shape and looked comfortable keeping us at arms length.

Raskin and Danilo were introduced for Barron and Bajrami. Clement had realised his mistake, but it felt like a mountain to climb given this teams aversion to scoring goals away from home.

The intensity was much better with those changes, and we made St Mirren work alot harder. Cerny hit the bar but the score remained the same.

The equaliser came from an almighty scramble in which we did well to keep the ball alive after a corner. It eventually fell to Danilo who finished well.

1-1 and you'd hope that we'd really kick on from then. Some doubts would have remained about the future of Clement even if we'd turned into Real Madrid for the last 30 minutes. But alas, we actually continued to look like Rangers.

Butland was called into action to make a save. The main thing that I found so disappointing was that for a team that goes long so regularly, we are truly terrible at long balls. The last 15 we looked like we'd ran out of ideas, constant long balls going straight to the St Mirren keeper. I'd given up on us winning the game long before the final whistle.

We got a warning sign that the game could be lost when Propper was dispossessed and we had to rely on Raskin to bail him out. We didn't heed that sign however.

With a few minutes of added on time remaining Sterling was casual in possession, we'd had no sense of urgency throughout so it's not a surprise really. The St Mirren forward was sharp, he took the ball easily. To give a small bit of credit, several players got back to help out. But despite this, it seemed we were powerless as the ball was laid off and blasted home to win the game for the Buddies.

I think this is the 3rd time this season that I've talked about the Manager's position being untenable. The first Old Firm and Kilmarnock away being the other two. After both matches we got to a reasonable standard with some genuinely good performances mixed in. But overall, the average across the season has not been good enough, take away European performances and it's absolutely laughable that Clement is still in charge.

The good news is that in theory we have someone in place to sack him unlike those other occasions. Patrick Stewart hasn't had any big calls to make so far, but it seems like he's faced with a big one just over a week into his tenure.

I don't think any good manager would fancy coming into this absolute disaster of a season and trying to steer us to brighter shores. So we may need to get an interim coach in and look for a permanent appointment to come in, fully backed, with a clear long term plan in the summer.

So it's not a great way to bring the festive period to a close for Rangers. There's a lot of despair around the club and hopefully we aren't wallowing in it for too long.