McAllister: Focus on the Football

GARY McALLISTER believes incidents within Rangers matches can sometimes overshadow the performance and results the team have been achieving.

Since the Boxing Day win over Hibs, much of the focus online and in the media has been on a second-half penalty claim for the Easter Road side that was turned down, rather than what was a showing of real resilience in some shocking weather conditions for Gers to claim all three points.

McAllister was speaking ahead of the trip to play St Mirren in the Scottish Premiership tomorrow, and he reckons there is an ‘over-analysing’ of certain happenings within games.

He explained :"If you are talking about some of the incidents at the weekend against Hibs, I would agree.

"Maybe there is an over-analysing because we felt it was a real, strong three points and a real, difficult game against an opponent who came to Ibrox and had a go and caused us problems.

"It is a modern-day thing because of social media and the media interest, but we can't take away from the fact we adapted well to the conditions at the weekend and had to fight really hard through the entire 90 minutes and more to win those three points."

One dark moment from the win over Hibs was an injury to midfielder Scott Arfield. McAllister gave an update on him and also on fellow midfielder Ryan Jack, continuing: "Scotty is en-route as we speak to get a scan, so we are just waiting on the results to come back.

"It is quite rare to see Scotty lying down on a pitch and having to be carried off - he is generally very robust so it was pretty disappointing to see him come off the pitch the way he did.

"But we are hopeful the scan shows up better than what that looked like.

"On Jacko, we are just going to have to be a wee bit more patient with Ryan. We were hopeful he could have been in and around the Hibs game, but we are just going to need to sit back and wait for Ryan to get fully fit."

Gers are well-aware of the threat St Mirren will pose them in Paisley tomorrow – albeit McAllister insists the focus will be on what Rangers can do to their opponents.

He added: "We have a lot of respect for the way they defend their goal, and they are probably a product of their manager.

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"He was a very robust centre-back so their attention to detail when they are defending their goal is very good.

"That is the conundrum we will have tomorrow - but as much as we respect what St Mirren are doing and the fine run they are on, we are fully focused on us and it is about what we do.

"If we go there and execute and play to our capabilities, we hopefully can get the right result."

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