Goldson insists he won’t be fazed by his detractors
Connor Goldson insists he won’t let his detractors get him down.
The Rangers centre-back has a simple formula for avoiding the anxiety that criticism can brings – he ignores any outside analysis of his performances.
It has been impossible for everyone else to avoid hearing grumbling about the 26-year-old from the Ibrox supporters.
He will be one of Steven Gerrard’s first names on the team-sheet for this afternoon’s Betfred League Cup Final against Celtic.
But many fans have been wondering why he remains a virtual ever-present, while fellow defenders Nikola Katic and George Edmundson find it hard to get game time.
Errors in recent matches against Feyenoord and Aberdeen have done nothing to quieten the critics.
When it’s put to Goldson that his place in the Rangers’ team is a subject debated in the stands, the player maintains it’s news to him.
He said: “To be honest, before you said that I actually didn’t know.
“I tend not read anything, high or low.
“If you’d asked someone on Sunday, after we’d played Hearts, who is the best defensive partnership, I’m sure it would have been a different answer to after Wednesday.
“I have a family I go home to every day after a match, and every day after training. They keep me away from football.
“I try to do my best. I’m a human being and I do every single thing in my power to perform well and help Rangers win games of football.
“Whether that’s preparing, recovering, doing things in the gym or eating well. I can look at myself in the mirror and I know I do everything right.
“If I have a bad game, if I make mistakes, it’s due to me being a human being and not being the best central defender in the world, which I know I’m obviously not.
“I try to limit them as much as I can and to stay as professional as I can.
“As long as I can go back after every game and look at myself in the mirror, then I’ll try not to listen to anything that comes from the other side.”
Goldson is keen to talk up his fellow defenders.
He went on: “The defensive record has been really good over the course of the season.
“In a game of football you are going to concede goals. Obviously we want to make them as hard to concede as possible.
“We have lost a few sloppy goals recently. But there is no point looking back to the past and dwelling on things that you can’t change.”
The former Brighton man doesn’t detect any gloom in the Rangers dressing room following their poor second-half display in the midweek draw with Aberdeen.
This is, by his own admission, the biggest game of his career and he believes Rangers are a better side than the one that lost the opening Old Firm game of the campaign.
Morale, he reports, is high as they try to end Celtic’s run of nine successive domestic trophies.
He went on: “No, it’s all excitement. This is what this team has been brought together for over the past 18 months.
“We all want to bring success to this football club. We have all been waiting for days like this to come along.
“We have a massive chance to do what we have been planning for a long time.
“There is a lot of hunger and a lot of excitement, and I’m sure before kick-off there will be a lot of nerves.
“But that can help. Nervous energy usually brings the best out of you as a football player.
“Wednesday night was a bump in the road but, if you look at the bigger picture, we are on a good run.
“There is a lot of pressure on us because of the wait for a trophy. Or you could say Celtic have won a lot and probably go in as the favourites. So they don’t want to end their run of winning competitions.”
Goldson tried hard not to react to former Celtic striker Chris Sutton describing Rangers’ skipper James Tavernier as a serial loser.
But he said: “I think it’s poor when ex-professional footballers come out these days and slate people.
“They know how hard it is to do the job.
“Fans? You accept it. They’ve never been footballers. They don’t know the pressure and the hard work.
“They think it’s an hour-and-ahalf of training each day and what a life it is. But there’s the pressure you’re under and the hard work you do every single day.
“When you leave the training ground, you constantly have to care about what you eat, what you do, what time you sleep. Everything is a routine.
“For ex-professional footballers to come out and scrutinise players so they get a headline, I think it’s poor.
“I wouldn’t do it.”