Rangers Stumble Again As Pre-Season Stutters To Get Going | OneFootball

In a recurring theme this pre-season, Rangers fans are divided down the middle between ‘it was only a friendly ffs’ and ‘wur doomed’.

The short version here is that once again Rangers were poor in a pre-season friendly. Now, we can only go by the score, but Rangers being held by Barnsley is not really what we were looking for.

And of course, this is a result without repercussions. But as we’ve explained before on Ibrox Noise, friendlies give morale. They give winning mentality.

And as we’ve preached more than once, the only single time in the last 13 years that Rangers had a strong pre-season was 55. Every other pre-season that we have had has been poor, mixed at absolute best.

And there’s no coincidence that we’ve not even come close to winning the league on any of those occasions. But 55? The pre-season went well, the confidence was there, the winning mentality was there, and hey presto, so was the title.

There’s no question that there’s a precedent to having a decent pre-season. It builds a grounding of confidence, of winning mentality, and it shows players who haven’t necessarily been champions before how to win.

Because it instils that winning mentality by stopping them learning that winning isn’t that important. Because at Rangers, we have to win. It is utterly vital.

Unfortunately, some fans try to defend it. They try to come out with the it was only a friendly FFS, or it was only, give him time, FS. All this stuff keeps on coming out when the results aren’t great.

If Rangers lose to Panathinaikos, it’ll be it was only a first competitive match, give him time, FFS. Or, when things don’t improve after that, it’ll be give him till January, he’s only just got his foot in the door, FFS.

There will be more and more excuses and constant shifting of the posts. It’s just the way some fans are, and that is okay, but unfortunately, they are frequently abusive to those who demand better.

So yes, Rangers once again had another bad pre-season result, even if official channels tried to claim it was a great workout.

Yes, it is true that the results don’t strictly matter in pre-season because they are only friendlies, FFS. But as we say, it’s about learning, learning how to win.

If the team is constantly winning in pre-season, the players are already learning that winning is what matters. They’re learning how to win, they’re getting the confidence of winning, and that is now what the players start to expect.

As long as the manager keeps on drilling that in and ensuring they’re keeping it up. You can’t just do it via complacency, of course.

But these players, they don’t know how to win. Once again, a draw. Two draws and a defeat in pre-season with a whole new squad really isn’t the way forward.

Many fans, as we say, will defend it and play to the importance of the matches. But more and more now of these supporters are actually starting to recognise that every match matters, whether it’s friendly or not, when you’re a Rangers player, when you’re a Rangers manager, and it should when you’re a Rangers fan.

So yes, another draw, another bad result. And we can’t say we’re any more enthused by Russell Martin, especially in light of what we reported earlier regarding his bizarre admission in a recent press conference.

Overall, this Rangers era is a very strange and subpar one, and we really just keep on hoping that we are wrong.