Rangers’ preseason continues to stutter amid Ajax defeat | OneFootball

Rangers’ ‘serious’ preseason got underway today against Ajax in Holland, with a rather error-strewn first 60 minutes leading to a 2-1 defeat.

It was of course ‘only a friendly’ which is what the ardent optimists refer to a lot when a bad performance and result sees frustration among the majority.

We’re indeed already seeing last season’s ‘judge him on his own team ffs’ morph into ‘wait till midseason before we judge him’ which will then become ‘wait till after the new year to judge him’.

In other words, those who blindly back the manager and team will keep on doing so, and dismissing the concerns of those who are a little more sceptical.

Until we have a properly winning Rangers, we’ll always have this tribalism between different fan groups, with the ‘back the team and manager ffs’ brigade facing off against the ‘this is abysmal’ crowd.

Both are correct – as fans the supporters should back the team and manager, but as concerned Rangers supporters there should be room for concern and constructive criticism.

So what did we make of the friendly v Ajax?

The first half was, in a word, absolutely atrocious. Rangers have had two friendlies already (Hamilton and Liege), and the same for Ajax, even if Philippe Clement wanted to suggest the Dutch were ahead of us in preparation.

And the difference in quality, in technical prowess, and attacking finesse was there to see.

Rangers were absolutely hapless at the back, Connor Goldson static as always, and he and Jack Butland conspired miserably to cost the first goal – Butland had a complete stinker and cost the second goal too, being rightly hooked at half time.

Dujon Sterling looked lost at RB, Ibrox Noise has been preaching endlessly that it’s not his best or natural position, and he had zero understanding of the role and zero understanding with Goldson.

If Sterling is seriously being considered as a RB solution then we’re in more trouble under this manager than we already feared.

It improved a bit when the 8 changes were made – there was without doubt more gumption and hunger from the effectively replaced team, but Ajax were still considerably more dangerous. Rangers only had 3 goals attempts in the second half to Ajax’s 7 – it’s just easy to see they’re a miles better team than us, regardless of what stage of preseason they’re at.

And of course Nico Raskin was forced off with injury – he’s said to have been wearing a leg brace and using crutches after the match, supposedly a twisted ankle, which probably rules him out for the start of the season if not longer.

So just like last summer Rangers’ preseason has been ghastly so far – last summer saw a tonne of expensive new signings under a clown of a manager, and this summer is seeing a few underwhelming additions under a manager we’re already very, very dubious about.

The squad is half-baked, the product on the pitch is a mess, and all we can do is offer faith that the boss gets this mess of a group into shape by the time the season starts.

A number of fans argued the starting XI was no better than Hearts, that it was way off Rangers level.

It’s hard to disagree with that.