Rangers pre-season wasn’t exactly inspiring but the hope was that everything would click for Michael Beale when the serious football began.
Apparently though, it takes more than hope and the Light Blue’s gaffer was out thought and humbled by Derek McInnes despite lining up with a newly built multi-million pound strike force.
Up next are Servette and, speaking to Sky Sports, Kenny Miller reckons that Rangers fans needn’t be worried and that Michael Beale’s men will put the weekend behind them.
With Kilmarnock having signed just as many players as Rangers, Beale couldn’t even use that as an excuse.
They managed to execute a game plan, so why couldn’t we?
Rangers will bounce back but Michael Beale has to be braver
Servette will provide an entirely different type of threat but their resilience has already been shown by the way that they progressed past Genk.
As Kenny Miller says though, Ibrox on a European night is an entirely different situation to Rugby Park on the worst surface in the country and Rangers need to come out like the team Michael Beale promised:
“The fans won’t be happy that Celtic got off to a good start again under Brendan Rodgers, and Rangers have slipped up on day one so already you’re playing catch-up. With that comes pressure.
“So, you go into a game on Wednesday night here at Ibrox in a Champions League qualifier and the fans will be turning up expectant and that will then automatically shift to the game at home on Saturday against Livingston.
“Here in front of 50,000 fans on the slick Ibrox pitch, I’d expect to see a lot more from Rangers in an attacking sense.
“You could see right from the off against Kilmarnock the ball bounces differently and it maybe took a few players some time to adjust to that.”
The players don’t have any excuses.
They aren’t carrying injuries and have been together long enough now.
Rangers have to give themselves a lead to take to Switzerland and nothing other than a vast improvement and a more adventurous starting XI from Michael Beale will be good enough.
If they think that the reception they got at full time on Saturday was bad, a poor result again could have a few of the new boys checking the small print in their contracts.
