Graeme Murty criticised the Rangers players who turned out in a friendly against Partick Thistle on Tuesday for failing with footballing fundamentals, as captured by RangersTV.
A strong Gers side featuring six first-team players – Andy Firth, Jon Flanagan, Matt Polster, Brandon Barker, Jake Hastie and Jordan Jones – were defeated 2-1 at the Rangers Training Centre.
It was a difficult result to stomach for Murty given the quality and experience on the pitch. After recognising the importance of playing time for fringe senior players and thanking the Jags for the fixture, he voiced his frustrations.
“We are, as a staff, fairly disappointed with our standard of play,” he said, as captured by RangersTV. “We had talent and ability on the pitch, but didn’t really capitalise in good moments, and I think we deserved to lose the game and that’s probably the first time I’ve said that this year.”
“We didn’t actually do enough to win the game. There were some nice bits, but one of the fundamentals of football is that you have to be able to defend and run around and outwork your opponents and I didn’t think we were anywhere near doing that today.”
“We weren’t good enough, we weren’t clinical enough, we weren’t incisive enough. All those things that describe good attacking play, we didn’t do enough, and it’s disappointing.”
Verdict
It’s concerning to see Murty, who is usually so keen to take positives from every game, left so frustrated following this one.
It was an impromptu fixture hurriedly arranged after the postponement of Thistle’s Championship match at the weekend, and it served as a big chance for several players on the fringes of Steven Gerrard’s squad to impress.
Yet, it seems that those in action today exhibited the same lack of cutting edge that has been so problematic in the Premiership in 2020.
Players like Ryan Kent haven’t been contributing enough since the winter break but have remained in the team and perhaps that’s due to a lack of genuine competition throughout the squad.
There were three pacey summer signings in action in this game in Jones, Barker and Hastie, and the fact that they couldn’t score or create goals against an ailing Championship side is worrying.
Likewise, a defence which featured the experienced Flanagan and two highly-rated youth internationals in Nathan Patterson and James Maxwell should really be looking to shut out an opposition who have struggled for goals all season.
