It was a poor performance on an individual level for most of the Rangers team at Easter Road. From a team perspective, there was a good attitude and workrate. However, too many passes were poor, or touches loose. The game was won through a lot of luck and a magnificent performance from our man of the match, Wes Foderingham.
Foderingham can come in for criticism which I often don’t understand. I think he’s a good goalkeeper with the potential to be very good. The stats suggest he lets in a lot of shots on target, but I can’t think of many where I feel he was solely to blame for a conceded goal. What would be fair to say is that he hadn’t had a match this season where he was the main reason we won the points.
That changed in this game. At 1-0 down in the first half, Hibs created a couple of excellent chances, and Foderingham stood up strong to make the saves. In many ways, what he done was exactly what the Hibs keeper failed to do for the Morelos goal. Wes was claiming crosses and making good saves. It added a touch of confidence to the team when they seemed to lack it. If not for his contribution, the game would have been out of sight in the first half.
Hibs played very well on the night, and in the second half they put Rangers under real pressure. The stand out moment in an attacking sense came from Brandon Barker. Having hit one post earlier after a good run, he cut inside again and shot to the near post. Foderingham done excellently to tip it on to the post. He even got back up sharply and denied Stokes a tap-in, despite the offside flag being raised. This was a goalkeeper in that zone where he’s sure he won’t lose a goal. He marshaled the defence, claimed crosses from deep, and kept the distribution simple.
In his post-match interview, he mentioned that often he can be rather quiet in a game then have to pick the ball out of the net at times. From what we’ve seen of Foderingham since he signed, he does seem very comfortable in games where he’s kept busy. From a goalkeeper perspective he’s still young enough to improve a lot. I would hope that anyone who has doubts about him will have at least questioned those opinions after this performance.
There were some battling performances from other players, but no one else came close to Foderingham for impact on the match.
Do you agree with our man of the match choice? Tweet us @rangersnewsuk with your thoughts!