Warburton made a lot of signings in the summer, as the squad was in need of numbers as well as quality. We got excited by signings of Kranjcar, Barton and Rossiter in particular, who seemed a good level above what we had in the squad. We definitely had no idea Celtic would kick on in the way they did under Brendan Rodgers, a much-maligned manager who seemed more famous for his press conferences and “interesting” man management than for his record at winning football matches.
Pre-season consisted mainly of the League Cup games, which aside from the Motherwell away match, presented no sort of challenge at all. We won through the group at a canter, not even conceding a goal, and went into the pre-season friendly with Burnley with a sense of optimism at how we’d fare against a decent side.
They ripped us to shreds. Given the disparity in terms of how much they can spend on players compared to us, they should have, but it was all too easy, and all a bit worrying.
Still, we sold a huge number of season tickets and went into that first league game against Hamilton excited to be back in the top league where we belong. The sun was shining, new signings were available, and it was time to get going.
And we showed pretty much straight away how our season was going to go, with a 1-1 draw at home in a game where we missed a number of chances. It took a bit of inspiration from Forrester coming off the bench and a lucky finish from Waghorn to get us our goal. The fans all figured it was just a blip, a slow start that was largely meaningless. We only scraped a couple of wins in the league in the month of August (the 5-0 win in the League Cup against Peterhead gave us all a bit of false hope we were moving in the right direction), then a draw with Kilmarnock started a run of four games without a win and was the last time we saw Rossiter playing this season.
We had signed Joe Garner for a fee most didn’t believe we’d spend in the current climate, and as we’d been very poor in front of goal it was a signing we were hoping would make an instant impact. He scored on his first start, but it was a consolation against Celtic in a drubbing that highlighted every problem we had. Horrendous defending, midfield being overrun, missing great chances, team folding once we went 1-0 down – just a horrible day.
It also led to the Barton saga, one which the club handled horrifically. He criticised the manager and squad (I’m told certain words were used that we can’t repeat), and was sent home from training and never played for us again. It took weeks of meetings, radio interviews where Barton could say what he liked it seemed, loads of twitter posts, Warburton not wanting to talk about it, and even Jim Traynor shouting at journalists before it was finally resolved, and absolutely none of it was a surprise. For many, it opened their eyes as to how Warburton was as a manager, especially when it came to handling criticism and difficult situations.
After the Celtic game, we also lost at Pittodrie (though we were unlucky to do so) and had taken 10 points from our first 24. Early season hopes had faded, and pretty much the entire squad was deemed unfit for purpose as we fell miles behind Celtic and weren’t even sitting second. We were going into October, couldn’t point to a great performance in any game against top league opposition, and it felt like we’d barely got started but almost had little to play for.
The cups were going to have to bring us some joy, and we had the semi-final of the League Cup against Celtic to look forward to. Another couple of unconvincing wins in the league preceded that, but we were finally seeing some signs of progress in Kranjcar’s performance levels.
And then his knee went, and that was his season done. The midfield trio of Barton, Rossiter and Kranjcar that we wanted to see wasn’t available to us from October onwards.
We went into the semi-final with a far more defensive approach after the last game, but it made little difference. We may only have lost 1-0, but we were battered, and it took a good goalkeeping performance and a lot of poor finishing from them to keep the scoreline to that. Given we all knew deep down that the league was done, that was another competition finished with nothing to show for it.
A couple of poor draws and some scrappy wins, the Kilmarnock win aside where we played pretty well, followed that before we went to Tynecastle in a game we really needed to win, and got turned over 2-0 going on five or six. The team showed pretty much nothing that night, leading many to believe Warburton had lost the dressing room, and as we were heading into December where the fixtures were very difficult on paper, we started to fear the worst.
As if to sum up their inconsistency though, December may have been our best month of the season. We beat Aberdeen and Hearts at home with good performances, and followed that up with two wins to go on that single four-game winning streak mentioned earlier. We then drew with St Johnstone at Ibrox, another game that upon reflection we should have won given the chances we had, and went into the New Year’s Eve game against Celtic at Ibrox hopeful that we’d found a bit of form and fight.
Another defeat, this time 2-1, and whilst many fans remember the moment Forrester should have played through Dodoo, or the sitter Miller missed, as being defining, the game again was one where we were dominated and managed to keep them out for the most part. Any idea of progress was proven to be false.
And that was the turn of the year, just about halfway through the campaign and one that hadn’t went well at all. In part two, we’ll look at the rest of the season and the areas discussed earlier.
Any memories from this which you think I’ve missed or glossed over? Tweet us @rangersnewsuk with your thoughts!
