There is a team in the Scottish Premiership who are yet to win a game, but everything suggests that trend will soon be bucked. They’ve created the second-highest xG per 90 in the division after appointing a new manager this summer with a vastly different playing idea from his predecessor. That style of play is visible in its implementation. No one internally is overreacting, and there is evidence to support that’s the correct strategy.
The team? Motherwell. Under new manager, Jens Berthel Askou, the Steelmen are creating the second most opportunities in the division (1.41xG per 90). Rangers? They’ve amassed the third-fewest after five league matches (0.91 xG per 90). Motherwell’s average quality of chance (xG/Shot) is the division’s joint-highest. Rangers’ is the division’s second-lowest.
Herein lies the problem at Ibrox for the new ownership and Russell Martin, who once again was privately backed following a 2-0 defeat against Hearts on Saturday. Only Aberdeen have scored fewer goals. Only Dundee and Livingston have created fewer chances. Only Dundee and Aberdeen have fewer points. A peek under the bonnet does not expose any evidence contrary to what the eye is seeing.
Things could turn for Rangers, but there is little evidence clearly pointing to the fact that things definitely will turn presently. CEO Patrick Stewart said the club would have to “build the plane while flying it” at Martin's unveiling - achieving wins to buy time and improve performance. But, to put it mildly, this idea hasn’t got off the ground.
Rangers have underperformed their xG, scoring two open-play goals from chances that should’ve created 4.6 goals, but even that levels out at under a goal per game. After 450 league minutes, there has not even been an open-play goal to savour for supporters.
There can be no dressing this up. No context of change, no European endeavours, no explanations of anxiety justify this level. After a summer that featured a £20m net spend and a Celtic side in such a state of flux that fans are organising against the board, the missed opportunity to steal a march is so blatantly obvious.
The blend between idealism and realism has started too far to the left and gradually shifted over to the right. Recruiting a manager to embed a style was, for many, this writer very much included, the right idea over the summer, but any idea needs evidence to achieve buy-in. The plane needs to take off. It feels as if, right across the board, from recruitment to the early tactical approach, there has been too little due diligence on how tricky that first section of this new era could prove.
This season was spoken of as a fresh start, a clean slate. Martin instead used tricky early-season draws against the likes of Dundee as evidence of experiences his side would learn from. After a third successive draw away at St Mirren, Martin told the BBC his team’s start to the season “wasn’t the end of the world”. Tell that to those who were at Ibrox on Saturday.
Where is the football that Martin and those who picked him spoke so enthusiastically of a few months ago? Stewart's appointment as Rangers CEO just under a year ago has coincided with new levels of disorder on the park, far from the clarity and order that was promised.
James Tavernier, perhaps the most honest he’s been in any post-match interview on Saturday, offered a revealing insight into why a young team is struggling with the doom and gloom of Ibrox. For many, it is the “first time they’ve experienced this” - against an already tricky backdrop, there’s your problem. As it stands, a new, experienced spine is not evident.
Criticisms of Martin as a ‘pound shop Pep’ misses the point. Pep Guardiola, ever tweaking shapes and structures, came out on top in the Manchester Derby with under 50% of the ball, the No.9 of all No.9s up top and a goalkeeper in Gigi Donorouma who was frozen out at PSG over the summer because his ball-playing was seen as a weakness. Hardly the cliche painted of his football. As the game becomes more transitional and end-to-end, less about ball possession, he is adapting. The best managers tweak and mould their idea. Ruben Amorim’s religious affiliation to a 3-4-2-1 structure that has Manchester United 31 points after 31 league games under his management is a direct contrast.
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Martin has tweaked and adapted somewhat in recent games, albeit it was his dogmatism that achieved a result which truly turned the pressure screw last month in Brugge.
Domestically, the 39-year-old had edged too close to control over chaos. Rangers’ grounding principle needed to be a relentless attack; instead, as the underlying numbers show, they have favoured ball possession above all and an illusion of control, creating almost half of last season’s lowly 1.73xG inside their first five matches.
Meanwhile, in Brugge, it took Rangers going 5-0 down by half-time for Martin to eventually concede attempts to keep playing and defend his box instead in a back five. Keeping Danilo, Lyall Cameron, Djeidi Gassama and other attackers on the pitch, all the while a £3.5m Manny Fernandez remained on the bench as the score went from 2-0 to 5-0 inside five minutes. Fernandez was conspicuously absent from Saturday’s squad while John Souttar struggled once again at the weekend. Thelo Aasgaard and Djeidi Gassama look like genuine upgrades on what came before, but that aside? The jury is out on how many positions the summer window has actually improved.
That particular decision in Belgium seemed to encapsulate what has been played so badly - the politics. It felt as though Martin would rather valiantly lose by his principles than shut up shop and suffer out a dreary 3-0 defeat on the night. Instead, Rangers flirted with their worst ever result, one that turned the moderates. Since that night in Belgium, the Ibrox side attempted to tighten up with a tweak in shape and although that earned a draw against a poor Celtic side, it was only when Rangers reverted to a 4-3-3 at the weekend that some chances flowed after initially starting in a 3-4-3 shape on the ball, without the multi-faceted full-backs and No.6 that have been behind this team’s, admittedly sparse, best moments.
Notice below a box midfield of Mikey Moore, Mo Diomande, Connor Barron and Thelo Aasgaard, with James Tavernier forming a back three.
As a result, Rangers could not progress the ball forward in a strange set-up without any space to hit behind the Hearts defence. The first goal they conceded? It derived directly from clunky attempts to play through the centre.
It’s hard to argue that this tactical shift wasn’t heavily influenced by the fact that there was no No.6 from the start to play this single pivot, as was the case against Celtic. One, signed to take the role in the summer, was on the bench, and another, the best at the club, in the stands. Connor Barron cannot occupy that position in this system, as multiple moments against Hearts demonstrated. Joe Rothwell improved things in a brief cameo after the bench, but hasn’t started since struggling away at Brugge, seemingly lacking the legs to cover big defensive spaces. The best player for that role, Nico Raskin, was watching on in the director’s box. The mess of that particular position and its ramifications is another example that helps decipher how this has gone so wrong so fast.
As a result, Diomande was often the deepest midfielder against Hearts. The Ivorian is not a natural No.6, though, and lost his man too easily in the lead-up to the first goal, while giving away a penalty before the second. Barron’s technical misgivings were obvious when he failed to control a pass in the lead-up to the opener.
Meanwhile, Djeidia Gassama and Thelo Aasgaard were shunted out to the right, where their influence is far less pronounced, with Oliver Antman yet to find a level of performance on the right wing his debut promised. Unsurprisingly, both improved when in more natural left-sided spots after the break.
Bad refereeing decisions can’t be ignored on the day, but truly in football, over the course, you make your own luck. You establish your own margin for error. Rangers’ xG difference of 0.02 after five league games shows their performances have left precisely none of that. A league-winning side would hope to balance out at around 1.5 in the Scottish Premiership.
You also need the crowd on side to be successful in Glasgow and while Martin repeatedly says issues aren’t tactical but physiological - still a responsibility of the head coach - games like the Brugge double-header directly feed into the lack of febrile, aggressive atmosphere required when some momentum was being built after the break against Hearts. Instead, hope levels are low. A young team have not learned from games like Dundee, instead they add to the scar tissue. The wrongly disallowed goal on Saturday at 1-0 down ought to have galvanised Ibrox but instead, undeterred, the crowd were going through the motions.
Up next? Hibs. Who have the best set-piece underlying numbers in the league (Rangers sit closer to the bottom of that table too) and the only higher xG/90 than Motherwell.
As the Rangers Review reported on Sunday, Martin still retains the support of the board. It is the right call of new owners to trust their judgment over fan noise because, clearly, if the last few years show anything, it is that sacking the man in the dugout is no silver bullet. But at the moment, the data under the hood doesn't suggest that patience will be a guarantee of success.
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