Gers really dined out on 55... they’ve not looked hungry since
Champs seriously off the boil and have questions to answer
THEY say a full house at Ibrox can be an extra man.
Last night they had to be just to take Rangers back up to a full quota after John Lundstram left them in the lurch.
Make no mistake this was shaping up to be a result that made the Malmo one look respectable.
Nil-nil at half time, playing with no urgency or sense of belief, and with Lundstram back in the dressing room after two merited yellow cards, Rangers were bang in bother in a Europa League play-off they were expected to win at a canter.
But while the team was off the boil, the supporters – some of whom had booed at the break – raised the roof at the start of the second half, boosted by the energy shown by Scott Wright who had come on for the out of sorts Ryan Kent.
Gerrard’s team responded by ramping it up to secure a win that looked unlikely at times. Alfredo Morelos got the goal, again, on a night when he was woefully out of kilter most of the time.
But when the moment arrived a one-on-one with the keeper, he finally came good and Rangers will take a lead to Armenia.
It should be enough because Rangers are a level up from the Alashkert side they took on last night. Yet, Gerrard won’t have the luxury of resting some of his players for the return, which he’d have been desperate to do ahead of the Old Firm clash that follows just 72 hours later.
That will annoy the Gers boss. As will the first-half display, which was abject. These Rangers players have dined out on the adulation they received for stopping the 10. And ever since, they’ve looked bloated and lacked the hunger to do it all again.
The apologists can say what they like but this team is seriously underperforming and if Malmo didn’t highlight the fact, last night certainly did.
Morelos, an absolute nightmare for defences when he’s in the mood, sloped around as if he was in a mood. Until he finally made the difference.
It was almost as if the players thought this was a formality; an inconvenience that had to be dealt with before the real thing gets underway.
The fact that Alashkert only squeezed past Connah’s Quay before losing to Moldovan opposition in the Champions League qualifiers also fed into the narrative that this tie would be a cakewalk. Yet Gerrard went with a really strong side in a bid to get the job done.
He brought back most of his big hitters, having given many of them the night off against Dunfermline. The one glaring exception was the sight of Borna Barisic on the bench.
Calvin Bassey produced a man-of-the-match display last Friday and he was rewarded by being thrown in again.
Rangers had the lion’s share of early possession but Gerrard’s team were pretty wasteful and the Armenians were happy to sit in and soak up any pressure. In fact, it took 15 minutes for any real sense of panic to be induced in the visitors’ defence when a superb Bassey cross was scrambled clear by keeper Ognen Cancarevic.
Rangers couldn’t get Morelos involved enough and Gerrard must have wished the Colombian had been on the end of the first gilt-edged chance 20 minutes into the tie.
Kent had time and space 14 yards out but his shot flicked the bar on the way over when it should have been bulging the net.
As the interval neared, there were signs Rangers were settling into a more fluid performance but the longer the game remained goalless, the more the level of anxiety built. And that anxiety ratcheted up several notches when Lundstram was sent off for a second yellow three minutes from the break.
Kent didn’t reappear after the break and Wright immediately looked more energetic and created a chance within seconds. The 10 men did improve in the second period and at no point did the team with the full quota of players look like scoring.
Morelos should have scored after Hagi laid a cross on a plate for him seven yards out. It didn’t take long to make amends and, again, Morelos ended up being the main man.
But he wasn’t the man of the match. There were 50,000 men of the match and all of them were in the
stands.