EXISTING week-to-week without a permanent manager is fine when you are winning games. When you are going down at home to Hamilton Accies for the first time on league business for 91 years it doesn’t seem quite so clever.
Graeme Murty admits he doesn’t know if he will still be in post as interim manager when he reports to the Rangers Football Centre this morning, although presiding over the club’s first Ibrox defeat to Hamilton in any competition since Adrian Sprott in 1987 won’t exactly help his credentials.
If it was inevitable that the main post-match talking point would be the club’s ongoing search for stability in the football department, Ryan Jack for one said the uncertainty had nothing to do with the club’s latest failure to rack up three league wins in a row. That was something which the players themselves had to take responsibility for.
Read more: Tam McManus: Templeton deserves the chance to prove he was always a player
“It’s nothing to do with not having a manager, it’s to do with us on the pitch, the players,” said Jack. “It’s totally our responsibility. We’ve had a chance today to go and beat Hamilton at home and put on another good performance, and I think in the first half we did that.
“We didn’t get the goal, fair enough, that happens, it’s football,” he added. “But when we lose the goal though there are ways to react and ways to respond, and I think we got a bit nervy and didn’t really trust each other on the pitch. That’s what happens when that sneaks into your game.”
There was no hiding place from some rather damning statistics as the dust settled on Saturday night. It is now nigh on a calendar year since the club was able to win three matches on the spin, and that is just two wins from their first seven league matches in Glasgow. While the only good news for the club’s supporters were similar home mishaps experienced on the day by European rivals Aberdeen and Hibs, the crowd – or at least what remained of it at the final whistle – wasn’t afraid to show its displeasure.
Read more: Tam McManus: Templeton deserves the chance to prove he was always a player
All in all it hasn’t exactly been the easiest of starts to Jack’s Rangers career and after Dundee this weekend is the small matter of two meetings with his former team Aberdeen, and presumably still his old gaffer Derek McInnes, in the space of four days. “On that result, people are going to question us, there’s no doubt,” said Jack. “There’s no doubt that there are games this season that we have lost that we have been favourites to go and win and we’ve not done it. Everyone is going to question us, everyone is going to criticise us and have their say with what they think. That’s why it’s important in the inside, within the team and the squad, that we get around each other, we stick together on the inside.
“There’s no doubt that times have been tough, but as teammates we’re all there for each other, and Graeme is in there and he’s right behind the boys, and we’re right behind him,” said Jack. “Like everything in my career I’m just going to try and take in my stride and take it as a learning curve. But it’s important that next week in training we stick with each other, we get that spring back in our step, and we come out fighting at Dundee. It would be stupid of us to look any further than going up to Dundee and showing a reaction. We need a good response and we want to go and get a good result for the fans.”
Read more: Tam McManus: Templeton deserves the chance to prove he was always a player
As much credit as Hamilton deserved for their organisation and work-rate, events rather conspired against Rangers on Saturday. Scoring with such abandon earlier in the campaign, Alfredo Morelos can now do anything but score – the stocky little Colombian contrived to miss an open goal when his header bounced down and over the crossbar from within the six yard box, hit the bar with a header, as did Danny Wilson, then missed the target when clean through on goal. At the other end, former Rangers player David Templeton showed no such profligacy for Accies as he hared onto an errant back pass from young Ross McCrorie, to round Foderingham and find the net. Neither did another former Rangers youth team product Darren Lyon, when he got on the end of some great work on the counter attack by Greg Docherty.
“Alfredo is a good lad and we’re all here for each other,” said Jack. “It’s not just Alfredo, we’ve had a disappointing result here and we all just have to stick together as a team. It’s important that we don’t come away from here blaming each other, falling out and arguing.
“A few of us have spoken to Ross and told him that everyone makes mistakes, that’s football and it’s part of the game,” he added. “I’m the first one to hold my hands up, I’ve made mistakes in my career and it’s how you react and how you respond that counts. Ross has got a really mature head on him, so I’m sure next week, if selected, he will put that right.” Whether Murty gets a chance to do likewise remains to be seen.
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