Yesterday’s 3-3 draw with Motherwell at Fir Park can be looked at in two ways after analysing the Rangers defence.
Firstly, there will be those who feel it was just a bad day at the office. Everyone has them. Rangers just failed to turn up in a soaking wet day against an extremely physical team.
However, on the other side of the coin, people will feel the defending was of mass concern. Two simple crosses into the box and a careless slip from Connor Goldson led to all three goals.
Nobody can deny that all three goals came from individual errors. Tavernier was at fault for two of them whilst Goldson was poor for the first goal. Outside of that, the previously impressive Goldson was struggling to deal with Danny Johnson.
Overall, it was a bad day for Rangers, and a massive two points dropped.
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The truth is that there were real elements of concern for Rangers supporters yesterday. Not just with regards to their defending, but in how they kept giving the ball straight back to Motherwell in the second half.
Defensively, however, is where the biggest problems for Rangers lay on Sunday.
Tav’s defensive lapses
Two crosses into the penalty area resulted in Tavernier losing his man. It was shocking defending from the right-back, and not for the first time has he been careless in tracking runners.
The captain has previous in recent seasons of struggling to keep track of his markers. This has resulted in a variety of big goals being scored down his side. Whilst Motherwell didn’t particularly target Tavernier’s side, it was his dodgy defending that cost Rangers once more.
Goldson, on the other hand, can just chalk this one up to a bad day. Given the soaking wet surface at Fir Park, it was easy for players to lose their footing. He wasn’t the only one to do so throughout the 90 minutes, but the area he did so was costly.
Afterwards, the former Brighton man tried desperately to make up for it with some overly-eager defending. This resulted in Johnson and Main getting the better of him too often, and all in all it was a poor performance from one of the summer signings.
Cracking Katic
Nikola Katic, on the other hand, didn’t make any real mistakes of notice. The Croatian is just getting better and better in a Rangers jersey, and put in a solid shift once more.
However, the most impressive performer of the defence was Borna Barisic. The former Osijek man marauded up and down the left with real purpose, and effectively set up two of the three goals with his runs.
Rangers supporters shouldn’t be overly-concerned with the performance of the defence. However, it isn’t timely given the huge clash with Celtic at Parkhead next weekend.
When analysing the Rangers defence, Gerrard and Gers fans will be hoping this was a one-off.