No hiding place for Gio after Livi add to strain
RIGHT at the end of seven minutes of time added-on, it opened up for John Lundstram. A swinging ball in from the left from Ben Davies hung perfectly in the air for him. He got his head on it flush. A late winner looked inevitable. Yet, the ball soared just over the bar.
It doesn’t matter a jot in the grand scheme of things anyway. Rangers scraping a victory from this game against ten-man Livingston would simply have been papering over the cracks. And there has been enough of that going on at Ibrox over the course of this season already.
The boos that rang out around the old ground when David Munro blew his whistle moments later were long and loud. Not as loud as they had been at half-time, though. Presumably because tens of thousands of folk in the stadium, even though the home side was pushing hard, had headed for the exits.
They know the game’s a bogey with this team. And this manager. The wonderful momentum that drove Rangers to a Europa League final just five months ago has disappeared into the ether, destroyed by the sale of key players, the failure to replace them adequately, a money-hungry board that has brassed off its customer base with so many ill-judged calls and the absence of any kind of notable style or strategy or system of play.
This game was a case in point. Just 90 minutes-plus of slinging balls into the area from all manner of angles and leaving it to the gods from there. And just not good enough.
The writing was on the wall early here when Joel Nouble opened the scoring for a visiting team that, although camped in their own half for the entire second 45, threw themselves in front of everything, dug in and gave their all for their head coach Davie Martindale.
Their opponents, in contrast, forgot turn up. The suggestion that they are giving it everything for their manager is risible.
The involvement of VAR Greg Aitken in persuading referee Munro to look again at upgrading a booking for Livi sub Morgan Boyes to a red with 12 minutes to play for a silly challenge on Alfredo Morelos gave them a lift — and a lifeline — but they still couldn’t take advantage even though Lundstram did find the net with a volley just as the regulation 90 ended.
What Napoli might to do them in the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona on Champions League business on Wednesday night chills the blood. There is a compelling case to be made for calling it a day with boss Giovanni van Bronckhorst right this instant. Events in the south of Italy have the potential to make that unavoidable.
Sure, Rangers are still only four points behind Celtic in the table, but it is about more than that. It is about some of the beatings they have suffered under Van Bronckhorst — particularly two against their arch-rivals. It is about where the team is going. And whether or not a campaign is ready to be written off by sticking with him when things are this uninspiring.
He cut a passive figure on the touchline yesterday. Any magic that ever existed has gone and isn’t coming back. When you are throwing on Fashion Sakala to save the day — replacing £2.8million Rabbi Matondo just over half-anhour after the Welshman had come on himself — it is surely time up.
The Dutchman had been hugely critical of his players in midweek because of the paucity of their first-half performance in a Premier Sports Cup win over Championship side Dundee at home. A fat lot of good his moaning and groaning did.
The standard of the opening 45 minutes from the Ibrox outfit in this one wasn’t a whole lot better. Yet, it wasn’t a massive surprise. And that’s a big part of the problem. Turgid, dismal football is becoming par for the course.
There was a real flatness about the stadium that tells its own story as well. A flatness among the fans and, more worryingly, within the players.
In the early stages, the greatest noise was reserved for barracking Borna Barisic for passing the ball backwards more than he was passing it forwards. Ryan Kent got a bit of the same. Keeping possession at all costs is all very good at the right time, but Van Bronckhorst needs his team to take more risks and make things happen — because he looks like a manager running out of time with a team that is running out of time.
A lot of the players look like they are playing well within themselves. Some don’t look terribly interested. Of course, the atmosphere was coloured greatly by the fact that Livingston took the lead after just four minutes too.
Antonio Colak had put a header just wide from a Kent cross when the Rangers rearguard was caught badly lacking at the other end of the park. Cristian Montano was permitted to skip up the left and deliver a low cross into the heart of the area.
Nouble, of course, has history with Rangers. He bullied them at the Tony Macaroni Arena at the start of the season. Once again, they struggled to handle him here. Mind you, putting a tackle in every now and again on the former Haringey Borough and Thurrock man would certainly help.
When Nouble collected Montano’s cross, he pretty much had his back to goal. Yet, he was given all the time he needed to take a touch, turn 180 degrees and send a low shot to Allan McGregor’s left and into the corner of the net.
That Rangers dominated possession after that point is largely irrelevant. They did nowhere near enough with the ball. Indeed, Jack Fitzwater found himself presented with a fine opportunity to make it 2-0 on 18 minutes when sending a half-volley from a Stephen Kelly corner wide.
Van Bronckhorst replaced Steven Davis with Matondo at the interval, no doubt trying to inject some kind of urgency into a lifeless team performance, and doubled that up by replacing Leon King with James Sands.
The arrival of Morelos midway through the second half, replacing Scott Arfield, upped the ante as he formed a front two with Colak — and the Colombian was duly at the centre of the one contentious moment involving VAR.
Boyes jumped into a tackle on him. It wasn’t terribly malicious, but he hung his foot out and his boot was high. Munro initially flashed a yellow, but was guided to the pitchside screen and used the evidence, wisely, to change his mind.
From that point on, it became frantic. Kemar Roofe was thrown on as a final act of desperation and Lundstram got Rangers on level terms when volleying home a Kent cross from the bye-line.
It earned a cheer. Got a bit of blood in the nostrils. That’s still there, of course. It’s just that, now the pretence that Rangers can still get results when it really, really matters has gone, it’s the removal of Van Bronckhorst that more and more of these disillusioned punters want.
It can’t be long now.