TAMED & SHAMED
Kenny gutted to see Gers show no derby fight and insists they can’t afford a repeat
KENNY MILLER long ago accepted Celtic have been streets ahead of Rangers on their way to six in a row this season.
But the Ibrox frontman has slammed his squad for their tame acceptance yesterday of the champions’ superiority when the two sides met for 90 minutes.
The Hoops remain on course for a domestic grand slam and a campaign-long unbeaten record in the Scottish game after one of the most one-sided Old Firm fixtures of recent seasons.
Rangers couldn’t lay a glove on Celtic for the first half hour in particular. Pedro Caixinha couldn’t find any answers on the drawing board – and his players failed miserably to come up with even a show of defiance on the pitch.
Miller said: “We never got out the traps, gave them too much respect and too much time on the ball. We allowed them to do pretty much whatever they wanted.
“When you look at the league positions it’s fair to say that over the course of this season they’ve been a long way ahead of us.
“But when it comes to a game like this we should be putting on a far better showing than we did.
“We didn’t stand up to the task in the first half. In the second we were better. We had more of the ball, we created chances and we were a threat but we weren’t a threat at all in the first half.
“There are positives we can take from the second half, moving into next week’s game, as long as we learn.
“The only positives to take from the first half was in terms of what we don’t want to be doing when we meet at Ibrox in the league – and the fact we only went in at the interval a goal down.
“We had a chance to regroup and make personnel and shape changes which helped us going into the second half. But we lost a poor goal five minutes after the restart, especially as the ball went from their box all the way up the other end of the field.
“I thought James Tavernier was getting there but it was a clear penalty and we gave ourselves a mountain to climb.
“As much as we didn’t play well we still had three or four chances. We needed to take at least one of them to allow us to have those last, frantic few minutes to put the ball into their box and under pressure.
“We never took our chances when they came, which is vital at this level.”
When Moussa Dembele went down injured Miller hosted a talk-in around Wes Foderingham’s goal with a group of team-mates, including Danny Wilson, in a bid to stop the rot.
Miller added: “We were trying to sort things out because we weren’t in the game. I dread to see the possession stats at that time in the match – they had the ball the whole time and we were allowing it.
“Whether it was down to individuals not doing the job or maybe not understanding the job but we definitely gave them too much respect.
“We were set up to be hard to beat and difficult to play through but there has
GARY RALSTON