'Rangers count the cost of missing the cut for Champions League'
- Published
Steven Gerrard's side lost 2-1 in both legs to Swedish side Malmo
From Jamie Robson's winner at Tannadice to Kyogo Furuhashi's hat-trick at Celtic Park to Antonio Colak's double at Ibrox the momentum and optimism in Glasgow has moved from one side of the city to the other.
Some thought this might take a season or seasons. In the complex bonkerdom of the game in Scotland it's taken four days.
When we see Rangers toiling, what are we looking at here? A team in a temporary and unpredicted slump or a team with greater issues?
The bare statistics show a startling reverse, that's for sure. That's three defeats in four games. Rangers only lost three in 56 games in all of last season - one of them on penalties. That's five goals conceded in a week. After three months of last season they'd only conceded four times in all competitions.
They beat Dundee United 4-0 last September. Last Saturday they lost 1-0. Before and after the game Steven Gerrard referred to the Tannadice club as Dundee, sloppy errors for a man whose attention to detail has been lauded and, in a sense, a microcosm of their weekend.
Scottish football never ceases to amaze. Last season Rangers kept eight clean sheets in a row at the start of the campaign and went unbeaten in their first 12 European matches. They beat Willem II, Galatasaray, Standard Liege (home and away), Lech Poznan (home and away), Royal Antwerp (home and away) and drew twice with Benfica.
In one of those games with the Portuguese side they scored three goals against a defence that included Jan Vertonghen, who now has 131 caps for Belgium, Nicolas Otamendi, who has 80 caps for Argentina and who's just won the Copa America, and Nuno Tavares, who has since been signed by Arsenal.
Three goals in 90 minutes against that stellar cast and yet they couldn't get one against United at Tannadice and failed to get any (while conceding two) against Malmo's 10 men in the second half on Tuesday.
It was supposed to the glorious homecoming of the Ibrox masses, with 50,000 fans packed in for the first time in an age, all there to see their champion team of last season brush off the cobwebs from the defeat in Dundee. At stake was a place in the play-off round for the Champions League group stage.
Win that one and it was lucre time. A €15.25m base fee for those who made it through, €2.7m for every victory, €900,000 for every draw. Millions more in TV market share.
Not just that, but the glamour of it all. The Champions League music that Charles Green droned on about. The sense of self-worth and feeling of a club moving forward.
All of that went. All of it. A Rangers defence that looked solid for much of last season now looks vulnerable. A Rangers attack that looked potent now looks uninspired and wasteful.
A 40-match unbeaten streak in the Premiership ended for Rangers at Tannadice last weekend
Rangers were odds-on favourites to win the league title - even among many diehard Celtic fans. Now those odds are shifting somewhat.
For more than a year the talk of a club in crisis focused on a flailing Celtic. Rangers are inserting themselves into this narrative now. Anybody who says they saw this coming would give Pinocchio a run for his money.
They have the same players, the same coaching staff, the same working practices. On the face of it they have two squads of players most of whom performed well in their league and European season last time around. They haven't lost anybody they would have wanted to keep. So what's gone wrong and can they right it quickly?
In the past week there's been a lot of revisiting of James Tavernier's programme notes from the Hamilton game at the end of the 2019-20 season. Remember? Rangers were in a dark place at the time. "Whenever anybody puts a bit of pressure on us in Scotland or gets in our face it seems to affect us too much," wrote the Rangers captain ahead of a game they went on to lose 1-0 at Ibrox. "They (the opposition) smell blood straight away and put us under pressure."
There was an eruption in the wake of his comments. Some Rangers fans wanted him stripped of the captaincy for admitting such weakness. Some wanted him sacked. Others not only wanted him sacked but wanted the person who approved the article and put it in the programme sacked as well. It was full-on rage.
Covid hit, fans disappeared and Rangers triumphed the next season. Tavernier became a hero with his goals and his leadership. In empty stadiums, Rangers went through the league campaign unbeaten. The banter years were over. It was Celtic's turn to be mocked.
Stadiums have supporters again and this weird Rangers frailty has reappeared. Views are being expressed that they struggle to play in front of fans and all the expectation and pressure that comes with it.
As a theory it's over-egged but if these losses continue for much longer then it cannot be discounted.
Celtic showed last season that you can find yourself in a hole before you realise it and that, once there for a wee while, it can be devilishly difficult to clamber out of it. What was previously easy becomes desperately difficult. Everything becomes stressed. Celtic got sucked into a vortex of self-doubt.
On Tuesday against Malmo, level on goals and a man up on numbers with 45 minutes to play in their own stadium in front of their own people, Rangers had a glorious chance to take one step closer to the Champions League. They blew it sky high. Too many of them were out of sorts, but why? The stress of the situation? The heat of a full house?
It was mostly the same players that scored five in two games against Benfica and Standard Liege and nine in two against Royal Antwerp. Something has changed.
It's not just the loss of a chance to mix it up with the major clubs in Europe that will hurt. It's the loss of revenue. Even if Rangers make it to the Europa League group stage the cash and kudos is nowhere near what's on offer in the biggest competition. And Rangers are a club that could have done with all those extra millions.
Rangers have reached the last 16 of the Europa League in each of the past two seasons
In announcing £15.9m losses at their annual general meeting back in December, managing director Stewart Robertson spoke of the importance of player sales. "We know that in time a key part of our business model means that we have to facilitate an increase in income by trading players," he said. "We have to really focus on that over the next 12 months. We know for the business model of the club we need to start moving one or two players a year."
Rangers are operating on soft loans from loyal investors but that's not where they want to be. They have to be self-sufficient.
Buy low, sell high. It's been nine years since they brought in £5.5m for Nikica Jelavic and 13 years since they sold Carlos Cuellar for £7.8m and Alan Hutton for £9m. For the longest time - plenty of those years were savagely turbulent - their player trading has been one-way traffic.
Upwards of £30m of Champions League money would have eased the need to sell, but that's gone - and the transfer market isn't looking all that hot at the moment, certainly not at the numbers that Rangers might be looking for. This is a big test for them, off the pitch and on.