RANGERS’ recent problems continued at the weekend as Kilmarnock visited Ibrox and became the latest team to take the scalp of the SPL champions.
Dick Advocaat’s men can now boast just ONE win in the last SEVEN games and only ONE goal in the last FIVE. It’s safe to say that it’s the most testing time of the Dutchman’s Ibrox career but they do have the chance to get back on track when they take on basement boys Dundee United in the CIS Insurance Cup on Tuesday evening.
And two vital points can’t be forgotten amongst all the doom and gloom: Advocaat was denied the chance to field TEN of his first team stars and even after the loss to Killie they are still in with a chance of winning every competition they entered at the start of the season.
But as for the game itself, Rangers can have no complaints. They were slow out of the traps, went behind after just five minutes and, as Advocaat said himself, from the moment Christope Cocard tapped the ball home the game was “done and dusted.”
Killie took the lead from their first attack of the match and to be honest the Rangers defence made life easy for them. Lorenzo Amoruso – who was booed by his OWN fans during the game – stood off Cocard which allowed the Frenchman to play the ball out wide to Andy McLaren.
The winger played it back into Cocard who had lost Amoruso once again and the striker was left with the simplest of tasks to stroke the ball home from all of three yards out.
In the 33rd minute Bobby Williamson’s men extended their lead, much to the frustration of the majority of the near 50,000 crowd which had packed into Ibrox. How ironic then that it was a man they once adored who caused the damage.
Ian Durrant threaded an inch-perfect pass through to the on-running Gary Holt, he fought off the challenge of Arthur Numan – who incidentally only passed a fitness test FIFTEEN minutes prior to kick-off – and blasted the ball past the helpless Jesper Christiansen.
Advocaat made a few changes both at the break and after the re-start but he would have needed Harry Houdini to get him out of this one and the writing was on the wall in the 67th minute when Kilmarnock achieved the unthinkable by making it 3-0.
McLaren once again caused problems on the left-hand side and it was his cross which was deflected into the net via the heel of Numan, rounding off a week he’ll most certainly want to forget following his red card in Austria in midweek.
The 3-0 defeat was Rangers’ heaviest at home since Hearts defeated them four years ago – ironically with Allan Johnston, now at Ibrox, scoring all three goals in a 3-0 win – and the first time they’ve suffered three league defeats on the trot since 1985/86.