Rangers 1-2 Hibernian.
The main issue with Rangers’ American owners is that they haven’t got a scoobie about what playing identity they actually want for the club. Some might say the Yanks were being pragmatic when they first championed progressive football—with all that cardboard-disruption nonsense—bringing in the failed Russell Martin and then Danny Röhl (who escaped his own looming disaster just in time to flee back to the warm embrace of Red Bull).
Realising they’d made a right pig's ear of that approach, Cavanagh & Co. quickly pulled a u-turn. They opted for a local formula, thinking it would build consensus and bring a bit of calm to a club that’s been an absolute shambles for decades. Enter Derek McInnes and that whole "Scottish core" business, which everyone has already completely forgotten about just a month after enthusiastically waving their arms in victory. Derek had built a rigid setup at Hearts. But let’s be honest, Rangers are no' Hearts. The Edinburgh lot didn't demand beautiful, sparkling football alongside immediate results; the patience there was a completely different story. Rangers' ambition is endless, but the reality is downright calamitous. Today, just like yesterday, Rangers is a pacman devouring everything in its path.
Hibernian—or rather, Don Robertson and the VAR—started putting a massive spanner in the works for Rangers with that bloody scandalous penalty. The kind of decision that leaves you proper rattled, a game-changing call just when we were settling onto the pitch.
Your players, my players.
The recruitment. The day kicked off with news seemingly designed just to put everyone in a foul mood: the rejected bid from Galatasaray for Chermiti. The subsequent injury, combined with the match result, made things feel even more bleak. The club has decided to stick with the plan of buying relatively young, no-name players from random leagues, hunting for that rare gem to flip for a massive profit down the line. But here's the daft truth: you don’t find many Igamanes growing in the desert. They’re doing this without thinking whether it completely guts any chance of building a winning setup. On top of that, we've got the latest trend—pandering to the current manager's wishlist. If it was Naderi and Chukwuani for Röhl before, today it’s Devlin, McCrorie, and Shankland for Derek. Every single one of them is a total flop, one after the other.
Rangers couldn't create a thing in the first half. Curtis had to resort to lumping crosses into the box, praying someone would get a head on one of those balls. Add to that a non-stop, paralyzing fear of making a mistake, and a total lack of movement that we simply cannot afford. Yokota followed Curtis's lead, trying to force something out of nothing until he was subbed off. Vanja and Raskin did their best to help the lad out.
We came out for the second half needing an equaliser, throwing everything forward in a desperate, chaotic, and messy push. Just like the Dundee United match, it left our backline completely exposed to any counter-attack, no matter how minor. This frantic rush was paired with one of Derek’s biggest obsessions: playing Diomande out as a winger. The lad completely divides opinion. He looks like our best player and our worst player at the same time, and I wouldn’t argue with either side. I found myself feeling that exact same conflict against the Polish side, and again today.
We scrambled an equaliser through an own goal—which is another massive worry, seeing as it was the exact same story against the Poles. I’m no' going to slag off Shankland today, it’s far too early for that, but we desperately need our number 9 to be a lethal finisher. Their goal felt entirely predictable, but what was truly mental was the sheer number of their players allowed to wander freely into our box. We lost again. Absolute rubbish.
