Rangers Stall Despite Speedy Play: Poor Record Dampens Victory Prospects
Sunday's win over St Mirren being a case in point - but then neither are those involving Celtic and Hearts. The key thing now is grinding out results and it may be a case of having to do that again on Saturday when they host Stephen Robinson's Aberdeen. If there's one thing Stephen Robinson knows how to do it's making his sides hard to beat so it could be another nerve-shredder for the Rangers fans at Ibrox.
[BBC] I said a couple of weeks ago I felt Rangers had given themselves too much to do in the title race and yet here we are, with eight games to go, and they sit just a point behind Celtic and three behind Hearts in the most fascinating Scottish Premiership season in recent memory. Rangers games are not particularly easy on the eye right now - Sunday's win over St Mirren being a case in point - but then neither are those involving Celtic and Hearts. The key thing now is grinding out results and it may be a case of having to do that again on Saturday when they host Stephen Robinson's Aberdeen.
If there's one thing Stephen Robinson knows how to do it's making his sides hard to beat so it could be another nerve-shredder for the Rangers fans at Ibrox. Of course, these games need not be so fraught, but Rangers' inability to turn dominance into goals to put matches beyond the opposition has plagued them all season, hence the 12 league draws (only Dundee United, with 13, have more in the top flight). Rangers' remarkable record of only two defeats is laudable but if they had been able to turn just a few of those draws into victories, they would be clear frontrunners.
Even since the January transfer window, the attacking talent they brought in has not necessarily yielded the goals supporters and Danny Rohl would have hoped for, with neither Andreas Skov Olsen nor Ryan Naderi quite having the intended impact. Tuur Rommens, on the other hand, got the crucial goal at the weekend and looks a very good signing - solid defensively and dangerous going forward. Consecutive clean sheets with the defensive pairing of Nasser Djiga and Emmanuel Fernandez suggest that might be the way to go for the title run-in as both players have grown into the Rangers jersey and now look considerably more reliable than they did earlier in the campaign.
It's all getting very exciting as the season approaches its climax and Rangers look like they'll be there or thereabouts when it comes to the wire. [BBC]