Rangers’ soulless display against Kilmarnock asks more questions of manager Michael Beale, reckons Bill Leckie
FILIP SEBO, Libor Sionko, Lionel Letizi.
Carlos Pena, Eduardo Herrera, Fabio Cardoso.
Six names from two eras of failure who personify Walter Smith’s description of Ibrox as a graveyard of players who can’t handle the pressure of wearing the shirt.
A damning description of past flops which came shooting back to mind as Rangers stumbled and bumbled to defeat at Kilmarnock on Saturday night.
Is it too early to start ordering a fresh set of headstones yet?
Probably.
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But let’s just say the hammer and chisel are being kept very handy.
Because it wasn’t just the sulphur from a barrage of pre-match flares that caught the back of the throat at Rugby Park.
No, there was more than a whiff of the Paul Le Guen era in the air, a definite whang of Pedro Caixinha’s ill-fated stay.
Not to mention the unmistakable scent of a current manager who spends his days second-guessing what the club he’s in charge of is all about and the kind of player it takes to meet the expectations of a support as fickle as it is frenzied.
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This summer, Michael Beale and the Rangers hierarchy decided that Sam Lammers, Cyriel Dessers, Abdallah Sima, Kieran Dowell and £6million man Danilo were that kind of player.
But on the evidence of their soul-less 1-0 defeat — which came off the back of a decidedly ropey pre-season — none of them yet comes close.
Truth is, you could have rolled the contributions of those five signings together like playdough and not come up with one performance to match what a Brad Lyons or a Danny Armstrong or a Will Dennis gave to the home side’s cause.
Fact is, they had less personality between them than a cardboard cut-out of Keir Starmer.
Yet this is where a £15m summer budget has gone.
Apart from Jose Cifuentes, an unused sub after signing on Friday, the players who went down 1-0 to a team who’d celebrate finishing sixth like it came with a trophy are pretty much the ones who’ll be trying to get them into the Champions League and stay on Celtic’s coat-tails.
This is the rebuild Beale talked so much about as prize after prize slipped beyond their grasp in the spring.
Yet, after a loss that was right out of Le Guen and Caixinha’s very worst days, it feels like he has another one to do in the 48 hours before Servette come calling on Wednesday night.
Am I surprised by this? Not in the least.
After all, as a coach, his ability is hailed by all who come into his orbit, but as a manager he arrived last November with just 22 previous matches — and nine wins — on his CV.
So, never mind trying to stop the likes of Ange Postecoglou and Brendan Rodgers to win the title, Beale’s trying to learn the job itself on the hoof.
And results in too many key games remind the world of how far he is from becoming time-served.
It’s the same defensive lapses by the same defenders every time.
It’s the same lack of an obvious plan every time.
It’s the same lack of leadership every time.
It’s the snapshot, captured on Sky’s live coverage as Killie celebrated the only goal, of James Tavernier and Connor Goldson glaring daggers at each other, a frame that could have been clipped from any one of 30 games over the past five years.
It’s the thought that a guy like Fashion Sakala has worked his backside off and has scored for fun at run-of-the-mill places like Killie and Motherwell and St Mirren, yet he’s surplus to requirements now that the new crop have touched down.
It’s the sight of a talented, homegrown kid like Alex Lowry playing the kind of tin-opening passes Rangers were screaming out for on Saturday, only he was doing it on loan for Hearts in their 2-0 win at McDiarmid Park.
Most of all, it’s the absence of that ingrained quality both halves of the Old Firm have always had, the belief that they’ll always wear the opposition down and they’ll always get the job done.
Celtic still do that at domestic level, week after week and season after season.
Rangers have barely done it since their run to the Europa League final; a minor footballing miracle that, it’s now melon-twisting to realise, happened only 15 months ago.
On Saturday night you could have gone and made the dinner the minute they went behind in the safe knowledge that you were going to miss hee-haw unless Killie scored again.
In those 15 months since Seville, they’ve gone backwards faster than a winning Boat Race crew but with far less sense of direction.
And, after this lesson in effort and application and desire and teamwork handed out by Derek McInnes and his men, I’m not sure where they go next.
In European terms, Servette on Wednesday isn’t just an absolute must-win, it’s an absolute must-win with passion and flair.
In league terms, they’re already playing catch-up with their greatest rivals and defeat in the home derby 26 days from now is unthinkable.
Put it this way, Gio van Bronckhorst got them to Seville then won the Scottish Cup and it still all unravelled for him within another six months, so how much capital does Beale have in the bank if things don’t improve?
None, that’s how much.
As little as Le Guen had back in 2006, as little as Caixinha had a decade later.
That’s not a dig at the guy. It’s just how it is.
And if he reads this and doesn’t believe me, let him read the headstones instead.
SLATE skies, floodlights on, rain hammering down like The Big Yin went to answer his phone and left his garden hose on.
Yes, folks, it’s the first Saturday in August.
Welcome to summer football.
Remember when we were told that’s what the Scottish game needed to kick it into life? Not to play in rotten weather?
Well, I said it back then and it’s worth saying again now. If anyone can tell me when exactly our summer is, sign me up.
At McDiarmid Park, the players were already on the pitch, they’d shaken hands and the coin had been tossed when someone noticed the VAR monitor was kaput. Why? Because its cabling was lying in a puddle the size of Loch Tay.
Along the road at Dens, out came the Scotland v Georgia tribute act brush-carriers to clear a corner of the pitch of gallons of standing water, while, on its way to Hamilton, the Cove Rangers bus had to take the scenic route to avoid flooding.
Don’t you just love this daft wee country?
EIGHTEEN goals in five Championship games.
With only one of those five not going down to the wire.
It all bodes well for what looks like being a division we could chuck a blanket over, because there’s a case for nine of the ten teams either going up or going down.
The tenth? Well, Friday’s 4-0 canter at Arbroath, with Louis Moult offering the focus up top they’ve sadly missed, suggests Jim Goodwin’s at last getting a tune out of Dundee United.
Though to be fair, if they DON’T win the title there should be the biggest steward’s inquiry in history.
IT’S 25 years this weekend since Ian Crocker first picked up a mic to commentate on Scottish football.
A timespan during which no one has come close to taking his mantle as the most articulate, fairest and hardest-grafting guy in his game up here.
Wherever you go, if he’s not on duty he’s there doing his homework.
And while he might be from the very south coast of England, he’s very much been accepted as one of our own.
So it was maybe fitting that he celebrated his milestone by covering both live matches on Saturday, first Celtic’s win over Ross County, then Killie’s defeat of Rangers.
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A double labour of love for a guy who gets a massive kick out of talking the sport up.
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