The lack of incisiveness in Martin’s team is remarkable for a set of players put together for a relative king’s ransom.
We’re told that Rangers’ net spend this summer has been £21m, including transfer fees and loan payments. You could put a dot between the 2 and the 1 and still wonder if they’ve got value.
They had Youssef Chermiti up front, a 21-year-old brought in from Everton at a cost of £8m.
It’s easy to bash the young striker, but he didn’t lack hunger or work-rate. What he lacked was a modicum of a chance, a sniff at goal. Just one.
The life of a Rangers centre-forward is a lonely existence right now. Isolated and joyless. They’re on their own up there. Sink or sink would appear to be the range of their options.
Diomande’s moment of madness was the last thing Martin needed, but it was Martin who picked him and it was Martin who picked others who struggled to make passes.
It was Martin, again, whose management of this team produced very little threat while giving up big chances even when it was 11 versus 11.
His midfielder let him down on Thursday, and on other days and nights it was others who let him down, didn’t show enough leadership, failed to make a difference.
The cast of characters on that front is long and thunderously unimpressive.
Martin gets filleted but the Rangers players can’t escape censure here. A lot of this mess is down to the manager, but not all of it.
He said the red changed the game and he was correct, but there’s always something – players being anxious, a red card, a penalty not given, another decision given in error. There’s a fatalism about all of this.
And on Sunday they have a trip to Livingston. Plastic pitch, canny manager, physical team motivated to the high heavens. A gauntlet awaits this meek Rangers outfit.
Read the full article here