Rangers might have suffered just their second loss under Steven Gerrard, but this one against Livingston is going to sting for a while. The Gers were nowhere at their best in a game which they should have won given the talent they have in their squad. An inspired performance from Grant Holt’s home team would undoubtedly give the former England captain a lot to think about here.
The performance was so uninspiring that even Gerrard went on to claim that they could have gone without scoring for a couple of days if they continued playing like that. The gaffer was quoted as saying,”Livingston deserved it; we didn’t create enough. I’ve got no complaints in terms of the scoreline. We never had enough quality in terms of crosses, in terms of trying to disrupt their back three. In the final third we were nowhere near good enough. We could have been playing for another couple of days and still not have scored.”
Maybe the team was too distracted by the prospect of another big Europa League clash, but there is no excuse for such an abominable performance. Here is what we feel went wrong in the game.
Too much of chopping and changing in personnel and formation
Steven Gerrard made as many as eight changes from the midweek encounter, and the Gers opted to play a 4-3-3 formation instead of the 4-1-4-1 or the 4-2-3-1 which they have often used. Not settling into a preferred formation is costing the team and playing with a striker like Kyle Lafferty down the left flank didn’t help either.
Another mistake which the boss made was that he once again dropped Nikola Katic in favour of Joe Worrall. The Nottingham Forest loanee might look like a leader at the back, but he was all over the place in the game as Livingston striker Dolly Menga had his number for the full 90 minutes.
Along with that, Worrall was poor with his distribution as he thumped the ball uselessly on numerous times up the field only to give the possession back to Livingston. Nikola Katic hasn’t done too much wrong in the Gers shirt, and the Croatian must be thinking on how Worrall seems to be the no.1 partner for Goldson at the moment.
Grant Holt tactically outwitted Gerrard
The Gers are too dependent on building their attacks from the flanks, and that is what Livingston cut down in this league clash. Wide players like Daniel Candeias, James Tavernier, Borna Barisic and Kyle Lafferty hardly had any success as Gary Holt drilled his defenders and especially the fullbacks to cut the supply to the wide regions. When Rangers tried to build from the middle, the manager used Scott Pittman and Keaghan Jacobs to almost man mark midfielder Ovie Ejaria who often had to drop deep to find space to receive the ball. As a result, he wasn’t able to affect the game much from such positions.
These were some of the mistakes and instances where Gerrard was outwitted and the Gers faithful would hope that the inexperienced gaffer could learn and improve from them as they take on Rapid Wien next in the Europa League clash.
