Rangers cracks resurface after brief run of success

It isn’t often that Rangers have truly kept company with old rivals Celtic in recent times. Being on the receiving end of an unexpected thumping won’t have been what the Ibrox side would have hoped for from the weekend.

The fact that every side in the top six – now including Brendan Rodgers’ men – can struggle or be stuffed by the teams around them will be little comfort to Rangers as they reflect on their dismantling by St Johnstone on Saturday.

Interim manager Graeme Murty presented the 3-1 loss to an on-point Perth opponent as a case of his team failing to demonstrate the same intensity in a game they were expected to win as they had in racking up four straight wins courtesy of victories from pressurisedencountersagainstaberdeen and Hibernian. It wasn’t that.

Rather, Rangers’ luck simply ran out. They benefited from all manner of breaks at Easter Road the previous midweek and were extremely streaky in seeing off Ross County at home days earlier.

Murty has done a fine job with the hand he has been dealt – no team has claimed more points than Rangers across the eight games he has been in charge – but it remains a rum one. All over the pitch, and now removed from it in such as Carlos Pena, the Rangers squad is weighed down by expensive deadwood.

Bruno Alves, pictured, could offer only platitudes over what went wrong as he was part of an Ibrox side that shipped in three goals for only the second time this season. He was hardly going to point the finger at himself. A corking firsthalf hit from Blair Alston might have been the start of Rangers’ problems, a matter of minutes after they seemed to be on their way with a fifth-minute Alfredo Morelos opener. But in the second half, Denny Johnstone should not have been able to arc a header in largely unimpeded, while cover was lacking as Graham Cummins steered a low shot in from the edge of the area.

“From what I remember of the goals, I don’t believe they were mistakes,” said the 35-year-old Portuguese international. “It was a good shot, a good header. Sometimes it is not just mistakes. Sometimes you need to value what the opponent did and the quality. I don’t believe they were mistakes but we need to be more focused and try to be more away from our box and prevent the counter-attack. We are always attacking but we also need to prepare to defend when we lose the ball.”

St Johnstone manager Tommy Wright said he was convinced that his team could capitalise on defensive vulnerabilities and a central pairing of Danny Wilson and Alves seems to offer these up. The Euro 2016 winner suggested the team as a whole allowed themselves to be panicked in adversity – though their previous two wins were achieved after going behind.

“Sometimes with a big team there is pressure, especially when we concede goals,” Alves said. “We need to know how to handle the pressure because the pressure will always be there for the big teams. If we know how to handle

BRUNO ALVES the pressure better, we can have better results. Sometimes we need to have more patience with the ball. Sometimes it is not the best way to play fast. Sometimes we need to move the ball and w s It n th w S w w p S a e sl fi si o C e

“I don’t believe they were mistakes. It was a good shot, a good header. Sometimes you need to value what the opponent did and the quality”