Why is it, whenever every player in Rangers squad loses the ability to score goals, that the defence decides to have an absolute nightmare too?
Connor Goldson and John Souttar were lucky to get 3/10s on the post-match player ratings, a pair who are normally solid looked like they were nowhere near the level needed for the Scottish Premiership – never mind take on Benfica.
Rangers created more than enough chances at Ibrox to beat Motherwell but one should be plenty, if the players at the other end of the park do their job, on this occasion, they simply weren’t good enough.
Rangers defence has a nightmare as duo despair
The worrying thing is, you could see the opening goal coming.
Neither Goldson nor Souttar were taking responsibility and trying to build play from the back, they were also making simple control and passing errors.
When Souttar’s calamity ended with Leo Bair opening the scoring you would have thought that it wouldn’t get any worse.
Well, it did.
Goldson fell over his own feet at least twice, he also got bullied by Bair on several occasions.
If Motherwell had a bit more pace in their attack, the scoreline could have been much worse.
What was most shocking, was that they didn’t play as a partnership.
They ticked every box on the list of don’ts for a solid pairing.
Sometimes the gap between them would be too big, on other occasions they would be too close, too square or attack the same space.
There was no organisation coming from either of them too.
For Motherwell’s first goal it was 5 v 2 in the box but nobody picked up the one thing that can actually score a goal.
With Souttar embarassing himself out wide, there is only one place that Goldson should have been, picking up Motherwell’s only striker.
He wasn’t and it was the first sign that we were in for a long afternoon.
I wouldn’t fancy being in their shoes when Gers boss Philippe Clement does the analysis of Rangers defence at Auchenhowie tomorrow.
