WARBS: DISMAL FORM IS RANDOM

Ibrox boss blames fate for Rangers’ dire form

MARK WARBURTON yesterday baffled Rangers fans by blaming “randomness” for their dismal draw with Ross County.

The Ibrox boss went on to speak of watching matches in terms of mathematics, quoting statistics and explaining how the supporters he meets can see what the bigger picture is.

But the Rangers supporters reacted negatively on social media to an interview on the club’s television channel.

It appears there is even more pressure on the manager than ever before just days ahead of the Scottish Cup tie with Morton at Ibrox.

When asked about the draw at County, Warburton said: “Randomness is a big thing. I learned a lot from our owner at Brentford. He’s a mathematician and we learned from how he looks at games.”

WAS yesterday the day when Mark Warburton lost the Rangers supporters for good?

There are quite a few, arguably now the majority, who believe the previously popular and respected Englishman has lost the plot after what was a strange interview on Rangers TV, a platform where he was hardly going to be grilled by Jeremy Paxman.

Warburton spoke of randomness being to blame for bad results, and then trotted out statistics about kilometres covered and shots on goal, or to put it another way, chances missed against Ross County.

“I think randomness is a big thing,” he said when looking back to Saturday and yet another poor performance. “I learned a lot from our previous owner at Brentford. He’s a mathematician and we learned a lot from him in terms of how he looks at games.

“The randomness: the ball goes to the back post, Kenny [Miller)] heads it to Jon Toral and it could go in. Joe Garner’s header pops off the goalkeeper, it could go in. Joe, in the first half at the far post, is a stud away.

“There were so many random natures that didn’t go our way. Was their goal offside? I don’t know, it was tight. Not worth complaining about now.

“So these are the random natures you look at and you hope over the course of a season they even themselves out.

“But at the end of the day we dropped points at home against Ross County.”

The owner Warburton spoke about was Matthew Benham, a businessman who made a fortune from statistical evaluation and gambling.

This is just one nugget of what he thinks about football: “I am not just talking about whether a team win or lose or score or not because there is a huge amount of what we call noise in that statistic. I want to look at the number and quality of the chances they created.

“If I am looking at a striker I absolutely do not care about his goalscoring record. For me the only thing that is interesting is how the team do collectively, offensively and defensively within the context of an individual’s performance.”

You can see where Warburton gets his soundbites from. It’s a nonsense.

Benham actually sacked Warburton after he had taken Brentford into the Championship play-offs.

Why? Well, adespite Brentford being fifth, the owner’s data suggested they had been lucky and in fact 11th was their “real” position.

And here lies the problem. Stats are not unimportant but it is not random corners are not defended, shots from inside the box don’t beat the keeper, players are put in positions which don’t suit them and that the transfer policy has been awful.

“The key point as far as the fans are rightly concerned is that w e dropped tw o points to Ross County,” said Warburton. “I quote the stats and, as always, you get misquoted. The fact is we had 15 corners, 26 shots, 18 on target and nine times out of 10 we win that game of football.

“The fact is we have to be clinical in the final third, we need to trust our technique and take our chances. There were lots of good things but there is no denying the fact we dropped two points at home.

“It’s not that we can’t be clinical. Last year we were scoring goals for fun. It’s the nature of the game, but I think the fact of the matter is we get into good areas and need to take our rewards.

“The fans, at the end of the day, come to see goals and