Dan: Rangers — Good Start or Bad?

Hi there!

Welcome back to what I hope has been an eagerly anticipated 4th post of my Rangers adventure. I’ve finally decided on how I’ll post my season and this is how it’ll go:

Pre-Season/August-November/November & December/January + Transfers/February & March/April & May…

So, since my last post was Pre-Season, it’s time to move onto August-November. Before we start I’ll warn you that this is going to be quite a long post so I’ll try to keep the text to a minimum. So without further ado, here’s how Rangers have done so far:

August Results

We started the season against Dundee Utd and Hearts, arguably the 3rd and 4th best teams in the league but Dundee put up much more of a fight than Hearts did. Dundee in fact gave me quite a scare when David Goodwillie (who else) slotted home to give them the lead. We did equalize before half time but 1-1 wasn’t the result I wanted. In all fairness my team did rally and grab the win through on loan Vladimir Weiss. Not as emphatic as I’d hoped but 3 points is 3 points!

Due to my formation (which I’ll reveal later) we make a lot of chances and that couples with the sheer quality we have over the rest of the league, with the exception of Celtic and Dundee Utd seems to make for a very attacking performance by my team each game. But Hearts weren’t the only team to suffer at our hands…

4-0 up by 20 minutes, 5-0 up by half time. Kilmarnock had just better think themselves lucky that my team became complacent in the 2nd half and didn’t come back out aiming for double figures. This was a great attacking display which really boosted our goal difference which may be key come the seasons end.

September Results

We appeared on TV quite a few times this month, and got humiliated twice in the Champions League. This month made it clear how much this team is actually in limbo. Again we continued to be rampant in the SPL but then we come up against our opponents in Group B, and they’re not easy, we got FC Twente, Valencia, and Manchester United! We were seeded 3rd so despite having a weaker team than them, FC Twente completed the group of death from the 4th pot. Here’s how things went against the Dutch Champions and Valencia…

The annoying thing is that we weren’t even outplayed! FC Twente had more shots but weren’t better than us and we dominated Valencia yet got beat 3-0 due to terrible finishing. The month wasn’t all bad though as we continued our unbeaten SPL start and progressed in the League Cup past Arbroath.

October Results

This was by far our most difficult month fixture-wise and it proved difficult on the pitch too. The Hibernian draw meant that Celtic drew level on points with us in the SPL and since we haven’t played each other yet it goes on goal difference, and they’re miles behind us. St. Johnstone and Aberdeen proved easy to beat in the SPL but then we played Motherwell who came back from 2-0 down to equalize before substitutes Fleck and Davis finished them off. Elsewhere we played Man Utd in the Champions League and Celtic in the League Cup quarter final…

Again we had more possession but obviously our attacking players aren’t good enough for this level since yet again we failed to create and when we did nobody could finish the chance off. I’m going to need to think carefully about my tactics in next years competition as obviously the tactics I’ve got don’t work.

League Cup Qtr Final

I know a lot of people would be eager to see how we did against Celtic the first time we met, so there it is. We won but I’m not reading anything into it, they clearly have a much better team man for man plus a much larger team (I have 5 players in my reserves, that’s how big our team is). This was such a close game that was won by a real poachers effort by El-Hadji Diouf so I was pleased. This puts us through to the semi-final where we’ll play…

…Hibernian. They stood in our way before but surely this time we’ll win and I think this competition should really be ours and I’d love Raith to beat Hearts just to make the final that little bit easier.

Well that’s how the season has gone so far, good domestic form and woeful European form, worse than expected and I’ll be extremely lucky to grab a point never mind 3rd place but I won’t dwell on it, if anything it’ll make the season much easier for me.

This screenshot will be on each of my posts and as you can see it’s not looking too bad at the moment. It is a little worrying however that my 2 best performers are loaned in but Bartley is in the last year of his contract so hopefully I can sign him on a free next season. Weiss is amazing due to his technical ability and pace while Lafferty and Naismith have been scoring for fun. Wydle hasn’t impressed but he’s young and I’ll look to loan him out at some point while Jelavic will be sold since he doesn’t fit my tactic. Speaking of tactics I’m sure you want to see the tactic that I play so here it is:

Rangers 4-3-3

It is ambitious but it gets results. I also have a 4-4-2 but I rarely use it, it’s there because it’s always a good idea in my opinion to have a 4-4-2 as one of your tactics. This formation seems to work in the Champions League despite the results, it keeps possession and it will work if I get bring in some players who can score goals at Champions League level.

What a surprise, Rangers and Celtic are 1st and 2nd! I would have been top by 2 points had it not been for that 0-0 draw with Hibs but I’m still 1st and that’s good enough for me. If we carry on playing this way it can surely only be a matter of time until we score our way to the title.

As for the Champions League group that’s a different story. We’ve suffered at the hands of Europe’s elite and it looks like we’ll be out without a single point under our belts. I have however completed the board expectation though since they only wanted me to qualify for the group stages, which was already done through winning the league last season. I also thought some people would like to see how Celtic are doing too so here you are:

Celtic got Real Madrid and Inter Milan but also Salzburg who they got their point from. Looks like it’s not going to be a good year for Scotland in European competitions but it’s not like we were handed easy groups.

Finally onto what may be the most important part of my time at Rangers, finances, and it’s good news!

The club made a loss for the first time under my reign last month but there’s still plenty of cash in the bank thanks to the prize money for reaching the group stages of the Champions League. The finance even improved enough for me to ask or more wage budget and get my request accepted by the board!

£23K extra wage budget should allow some manoeuvrability in the winter transfer market even it may be the loan market. In case you were wondering the £279K transfer budget is my cut from the Papac deal but I may even chance my hand at getting some transfer budget from the board in January.

Well that’s all for now! I know this post was a little long but hopefully it was worth it!

Thanks for reading!