DAVID McCallum says he was delighted with the attacking threat that his Rangers B side showed in their 3-0 victory over Berwick Rangers in the Lowland League this afternoon.
The Young Gers left it until the final ten minutes to open the scoring, but they got their rewards by scoring three goals before full time to maintain their strong start to the league campaign.
Speaking to RangersTV after the win, McCallum praised his team’s attacking quality: “I’m really pleased with most of the first half. I thought we were really strong in our performance – we carried a lot of attacking threat and control.
"We challenged the forward players to carry an attacking threat, running with the ball and going against the backline, creating opportunities not necessarily with the ball but also because of your movement.
“The bit that was missing was inside the penalty area that gets you the goal – that was the only frustration in the first half. I thought we were more open in the second half than we would have liked it to have been – part of that is because we were chasing the game to go ahead and you leave yourself open at times.
"Unfortunately that allowed Berwick Rangers a couple of opportunities which made the boys a little bit more uneasy than they needed to be because it was a game I thought they did really well for the most part.
“If you look over the course of the season, we’ve not necessarily struggled to score goals. It’s something we’ve been really strong at. We didn’t manage to do it today until late in the game.
"It goes to show that, even though in the first half we created more chances, in the second half when we were more open, we still managed to get the goals. It doesn’t matter how the game pans out, we always carry an attacking threat.”
The Light Blues once again grew stronger as the second half progressed and, after wins of a similar nature against Hearts B and Edinburgh University in recent weeks, McCallum believes his players are being rewarded late in matches for the intensity that they show during the week on the training pitch.
He continued: “Every day we train at that level and challenge them that, although it’s what we do with and without the ball tactically within the game, it’s all got to be done at an intensity that gets them close to the first team. That’s the ultimate objective for these lads. We’ll hopefully keep pushing those levels so whenever the games come up, they’ll be ready to go either way.
The focus now shifts to midweek for Rangers, where they face a trip to Italy to face Napoli in the UEFA Youth League.
McCallum added: “Up until now we’ve only looked at the games in front of that – that now is Napoli. We’ll remind ourselves of the threats they have and what opportunities we had in the last game.
“It’s an away game, which makes it a little different – we’ve noticed that when we’ve went to away venues the games have tended to be a little different. It’s on an Astroturf pitch as well and it will be a little warmer than it was today so we’ll look forward to it and prepare well to put ourselves in a strong position to put in a strong performance.”
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