A vital 3 points but Rangers clearly need more | OneFootball

Rangers’ slightly underwhelming 0-1 over Dundee United was significant on a number of levels, and two of the main ones were exact opposites of each other.

On one hand Rangers went to a tough venue with an unbeaten home record, above ourselves in the table at the time, and comfortably overran the hosts for the first 15 minutes, bagging a convincing goal.

On the other, the crash around that time to a much slower display where the players seemed to stop playing and let Utd begin to dictate the match a lot more was the sort of stuff Celtic punished with ease at Parkhead.

And finally, a third aspect, that Aberdeen still sit second, a ridiculous five points ahead of Rangers, with an almost completely new team themselves, having won every match, rather pours cold water over Philippe Clement and the ‘give them time’ stuff.

It was, fundamentally, a vital three points – Rangers couldn’t afford to let Celtic (or Aberdeen) slip further away, and Utd have been a threat to most teams this season.

Indeed, they actually didn’t lay much if any of a glove on Rangers in this one, managing just 5 off-target shots and not forcing Jack Butland into any serious work.

That is to be commended and it shows a defence that was actually doing its job – we reported the stats from the rearguard, only Robin Propper perhaps didn’t shine so well, but the other three did put in good shifts and the hosts were nullified fairly easily, in truth.

So this wasn’t an awful afternoon from Rangers even if the performance wasn’t spectacular.

Clement was roundly criticised for trying to justify the loss to Celtic both by the Ross County win and by boasting of Rangers’ stats at Parkhead.

Stats only matter as a positive argument when you win a match, if you draw or lose they are completely redundant. They illustrate the big picture well, yes, but the big picture really always boils down to win or lose.

And in this match, while Rangers did not win by the margin they should have, and took the foot off the gas far too early, the stats show that Utd had no joy at all against Rangers’ rearguard and that’s a sign of positive progress.

Overall we can be happy with the three points and while attack was clearly not good enough, we didn’t let Celtic or Aberdeen slip further away.

Was it the turning point some suggest? No, not even close. But it did, as the BBC report suggests, stop the side tumbling over the cliff edge – for Rangers to be 8 points behind Celtic after 5 matches would be literally disgraceful. P45 material.

We’re ‘only’ 5, but Clement has a lot of work to get this side even remotely convincing.