Heading into the first game of the season, Michael Beale claims Rangers fans had renewed optimism in the title battle with Celtic as the club visited Kilmarnock.
Several new signings have come into the side, whilst several other seasoned campaigners have been shipped out, with the promise of a re-energised Rangers seemingly exciting the club’s supporters.
At least, that’s what the Rangers manager had convinced himself.
After a genuinely disheartening pre-season campaign, clashes with European powerhouses Olympiakos and Hoffenheim supposed to prepare us for the Rugby Park dross, there were already fears building.
If Michael Beale genuinely believes that after watching such a half-hearted pre-season run that the Ibrox support was feeling the positivity then he hasn’t been paying attention.
Heading into the match with Kilmarnock, there were plenty of Rangers fans who foreseen a tough game but a series of frustrating managerial decisions and the same old faces making the same old mistakes has poured cold water on the embers of optimism that existed in the support after a draining few weeks in the build up.
Draining is the word; Rangers are draining, our tactics are draining, our players, management and soundbites are draining. It is a chore to watch this team and has been for the majority of the last 24 months, save for a few flickers of encouragement.
There is one currency you get to trade in with the supporters at Ibrox and it’s trophies. Title 55, the Scottish Cup and the Europa League Final run were an age ago. The bank is empty and there is no overdraft.
Michael Beale revolution hits Kilmarnock roadblock
Whilst player turnover was demanded by the fans this summer, we’ve got rid of over 1000 Ibrox appearances and kept the hopeless few who’ve been the bedrock of disappointment after disappointment in recent seasons.
Going by the starting XI at Rugby Park, they’re potentially set to be the bedrock of this one too.
The new guys can get a bit of a by, and we can talk about players needing time to gel and settle all we want, but the reality is that Kilmarnock had seven new permanent signings in their starting XI whilst we had five.
Ok so Kilmarnock’s players have got experience of the Scottish game, but it perhaps still says something about Michael Beale against Derek McInnes that the ex-Ger’s budget squad have gelled more coherently than the one at Ibrox.
And it’s the Ibrox manager who is now in the spotlight with fan ire aimed firmly in his direction as a questionable starting XI, insistence on playing two defensive midfielders, hesitant and unhelpful substitutions and a lack of clear identity on the park have fans ramping up the pressure.
The Ibrox boss had a shocker and not for the first time on a big occasion; see last season’s Scottish League Cup Final.
Michael Beale can lean on players needing time to understand his ideas, but if he’s really on board with the Ibrox ethos then surely he understands that results have to come immediately with the performances later.
At Rugby Park we had neither.
Can Rangers keep Celtic pace?
Pedestrian, lacklustre, listless, pathetic. Words that an apathetic Rangers support are all too used to when it comes to watching their team wobble and then eventually collapse season on season in the face of Celtic’s dominance.
There is very little to go on from that 90 minutes at Rugby Park which suggests our team have the bite to overcome these limited, gutsy teams in Scotland and the venture to Ayrshire is a worrying pre-cursor to clashes at Tynecastle, Easter Road, Pittodrie and Celtic Park this season.
Every dropped point is a disaster in Scotland and we’re now three points behind a team who only dropped points in six games out of 38 last season. Three of those matches came after they’d already won the title.
That after only one game there is such intense scrutiny on a new squad does not bode well for the remainder of the season and Rangers are already one more weekend of dropped points away from spending the campaign barely in the Parkhead side’s rear-view mirror.
As the pre-season pre-amble has ramped up so have the patronising soundbites, from within the squad, club and management, but at the moment it’s the same old hot air with little return.
We might only be one match into the new campaign, and heck, Michael Beale might yet turn it around post Kilmarnock, but the reality is that far from competing for a treble, we’re potentially looking at a Rangers campaign pinned against stopping Celtic lifting yet another one.
But will that be enough to keep Michael Beale in his job as the pressure and frustration begins to build around the heavily-backed Rangers manager?
