Rangers legend Ally McCoist thinks ‘the signs were there’

Ibrox Noise

·25 April 2024

Rangers legend Ally McCoist thinks ‘the signs were there’

Rangers legend Ally McCoist believes Rangers can still win 56 this season, but that while the deterioration in results was easy to predict in hindsight, he still didn’t see them coming.

Regardless of the return to some form in the Scottish Cup win v Hearts, Rangers are on a bad domestic league run at the moment, and Ibrox Noise’s straw poll prediction thread of this weekend’s result is nowhere near as confident from the fans as it would have been two months ago with a surprising number not predicting a win. Or just crossing fingers and praying for one.

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And Ally thinks Rangers’ collapse was coming, even if it was a little unpredictable.

Speaking to Flashscore via Tribal Football, he said:

“The signs were there and I’ll tell you why. They lost to Motherwell at home (first game in March) and their performance was very poor. But they got away with that because Celtic lost at Hearts in the same round so that was kind of glossed over. I could tell that all wasn’t well in their camp, but to be honest, I couldn’t see a collapse of that size coming. With the draw against Celtic they’ve only taken five points out of a possible 15. I really don’t think it’s finished. The one thing that will have to happen, I think, is that Rangers will have to go to Celtic and win. But looking at the other teams, a side like Kilmarnock are doing really, really well and both Rangers and Celtic have dropped points already against them.”

That is a big one, winning at Parkhead, but there are so many other points both sides are quite capable of dropping as well.

The Rangers hero went on:

“Derek McInnes has done a fantastic job there, and obviously there is Hearts as well, so I think there will be one or two twists and turns. I thought Aberdeen did really, really well. Not a lot of people gave them much hope because their results against Celtic haven’t been good but they probably could and should have won the game. When it goes to penalties, anything can happen and Celtic just found a way.”

By pure luck, of course, but hey, luck is part of winning.

Rangers’ collapse was predictable from the point of view of bad rotation and rotating the wrong players, too many exhausted and off-form players keeping their places and fresh untried players rotting on the bench.

That is definitely on Philippe Clement.

As for St Mirren? Rangers fans aren’t overly confident, and if Connor Goldson’s name is in the XI there, that confidence will reduce further.

Might not matter about Parkhead, Ally.