FIFTEEN disastrous first-half minutes condemned Rangers to their second league defeat of the season as their slackness in defence gifted Hibernian victory at Ibrox.
The Light Blues went into the match looking to close the gap on SPFL Championship leaders Hearts at the top of the table.
Instead, they find themselves six points adrift of the Tynecastle outfit with only seven games gone and their task to overhaul the in-form Jambos has become more difficult.
Ally McCoist’s team had opportunities to break the deadlock but careless play at the back allowed the visitors to carve them open three times before the break instead.
Although they reduced Hibs’ cushion in the second period, they never got close to drawing level.
It’s clearly far too early to say anything has been won or lost and the manager will rightly stress more twists and turns lie ahead.
But against a team which had lost four of its first six second-tier outings, he saw his players struggle to show the necessary imagination to come out on top.
More than that, he’ll be irritated the capital club probably didn’t play as well as it did the last time it came to Ibrox, when it lost in extra-time in the opening round of the Challenge Cup.
Rangers did as much to beat themselves this evening as Hibs and the ease with which they found the net was deeply disappointing.
McCoist made one change to the side which beat Falkirk in the League Cup last week, with Arnold Peralta replacing Fraser Aird on the right side of midfield.
Gers began brightly and threatened soon enough, with Kris Boyd’s shot on the turn deflected behind after Lee Wallace and Stevie Smith linked well down the left.
Those two in particular looked a real threat in the early stages and Dean Shiels’ movement was a great foil for each.
Ultimately, however, the good promise they showed coming forward faded all too quickly as the Light Blues reverted too often to long balls to Boyd which seldom worked.
With the game still goalless, Hibs tried to break when they could but didn’t yet look like making any kind of breakthrough.
Indeed, the visitors left gaps at the back and looked shaky in defence which in turn left them exposed at times and it seemed that might be a bigger concern for them at that point.
The trouble was Gers couldn’t exploit them and after missing a couple of chances they gave away cheap goals which left them with too much of a deficit to make up.
A foul on Boyd gave Smith a chance to bend in a free kick from just outside the area and he opted to go low, with keeper Mark Oxley spilling his attempt then seeing it hacked away.
Ian Black also tried his luck after the visitors made a meal of clearing their lines and they were relieved to see his attempt twist too high.
Those misses proved costly and things went downhill rapidly as the Easter Road outfit went ahead in bizarre circumstances after 25 minutes through Jason Cummings.
Too many home players poured forward for a free kick and Oxley realised that, playing a long ball high upfield.
Peralta had hung back to protect his goal as the last man but completely misjudged its flight and came off second best as Cummings challenged and emerged with the ball at his feet.
Steve Simonsen got a touch on the shot but it wasn’t enough and as Peralta chased a spinning shot towards goal, he got there too late to keep it out.
Rangers needed to react but didn’t and soon they found themselves two goals down with a proverbial mountain to climb.
Darren McGregor did well in the first instance to win a defensive header but the hosts were too slow to follow it up.
That meant that when Lewis Stevenson swung in from the left seconds later, he found David Gray a couple of yards out and he nodded over the line with the goal at mercy.
The third goal of the night was even more painful to accept as a series of tackles were lost and the sequence of play ended with Hibs celebrating again.
Dominique Malonga did well to spread wide left to Stevenson and once again he was the provider for Cummings, who stroked past Simonsen.
The chorus of boos which accompanied Gers off the park at the break was understandable and a quick upturn was required at the restart.
Peralta was withdrawn as Aird replaced him for the sake of being more positive coming upfield.
But Rangers were lucky not to concede a penalty when Lee McCulloch appeared to help the ball out for a corner with his arm in the area.
McCoist’s men needed something to give them hope and at last, 55 minutes in, they got it when Nicky Law placed a fine finish into the roof of the net after Wallace’s shot was blocked.
That gave the home crowd a lift as they found their voice for the first time since the opening moments of the game.
It boosted the team too and suddenly it looked dangerous again, with Hibs equally rattled as Scott Robertson conceded one corner and McCulloch forced another.
Aird certainly injected pace in the home side’s play and a mazy run almost reaped rewards but his final shot 25 yards out was blocked.
With that, any momentum which was building began ebbing away again and Hibs knew their objective in the final quarter of the contest was to break things up as much as possible.
Rangers tried to counter that by introducing David Templeton for Smith and he quickly won a free kick which forced Oxley to fist Black’s delivery away.
Aird then won a corner as his low drive looped up off a lunging defender and just beyond the crossbar.
Time was running out and Gers needed a second to give themselves a chance so Bilel Mohsni’s header running wide from the set piece wasn’t what they wanted.
Frustration was setting in and when Boyd had a goal disallowed for offside for the fifth time in 2014/15 six minutes from the end, it killed off any lingering hope.
RANGERS: Simonsen; McGregor, McCulloch, Mohsni, Wallace; Peralta (Aird 46), Black, Law, Smith (Templeton 69); Shiels (Daly 64), Boyd.
SUBS NOT USED: Robinson, Hutton, Foster, Zaliukas.
SCORER: Law 55.
BOOKINGS: Black, McGregor.
HIBERNIAN: Oxley; Forster, Hanlon, Fontaine, Robertson; Gray (Booth 46), Allan, Craig, Stevenson; Cummings (Harris 81), Malonga.
SUBS NOT USED: Perntreau, Stanton, Heffernan, Handling, Kennedy.
SCORERS: Cummings 25, 39, Gray 31.
BOOKINGS: Cummings, Booth, Craig.
REFEREE: Calum Murray.
ATTENDANCE: 31,619.
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