Rangers captain James Tavernier has claimed that the Ibrox side is “devastated” in the wake of the Hearts defeat and questioned his own side’s mentality.
The Rangers skipper has come under increasing fire from supporters for his role in the club’s domestic collapse at the beginning of 2020.
A lack of communication from the Ibrox skipper to the support has been routinely criticised, so his comments in the wake of the Scottish Cup exit will be welcomed by fans.
But the nature of his comments doesn’t make particularly good reading, with Rangers toiling and the Ibrox skipper not exactly filling fans with confidence that will change.
“It’s clear as day the mental strength wasn’t there,” said Tavernier [Daily Record].
“We didn’t back Braga up with a performance. There’s not much I can say on that.
“We can only show we have it by winning games. Clearly against Hearts we didn’t show it enough.
“We knew what was coming. You need to grab it with both hands and respond to it.
“But I don’t think we tested the keeper once in the entire game. I don’t think he even had a shot to save.
“It was not good enough from the team in general. In the past, we’ve shown it in certain games but when Hearts sniffed blood from the get-go we struggled to deal with it.
“In the first half of the season when teams dropped off us we were scoring five or six goals. Then we come to the second part of the season and we’re not gritty enough and able to see out games.”
If Tavernier’s despondent admission of this Rangers side’s failures wasn’t painful enough, the Ibrox skipper is at a loss to figure out why the domestic collapse has happened.
Whilst praising his teammates for their performance against Braga in the week, Tavernier is struggling to put a finger on why things have gone wrong back in Scotland.
More than that, Tavernier is clearly struggling to figure out how the squad are going to turn this around.
“I don’t know what it comes down to. We proved we can do it last midweek but in the second part of the season we have lacked consistency levels,” said Tavernier.
“Since the break we’ve let ourselves down too many times and this is another one.
“We’re devastated. The lads are finding it hard to swallow.
“We’ve let the club down, the fans down, the gaffer down and ourselves down.
“Going from such a high during the week against a very good team to failing to answer questions at a place where we’ve struggled during the season.
“We’ve not produced a performance good enough to put us into the semi-final.
“This has happened two years in a row now as we were knocked out by Aberdeen last year. It has happened again this year and it’s hard to take.
“All the boys are devastated. It’s something we don’t mean to do but we really need to look hard at ourselves. We need to sit down together and see what the right answers are.
“It has happened too many times now and we need a long, hard look at ourselves.”
It’ll be hard to convince Rangers fans that this form is going to be turned around by having a long hard look at what’s going on.
It starts by getting results on the pitch and not making any excuses for what’s been a truly awful start to 2020.
