Rangers defeated Aberdeen by two goals to one on Tuesday, in what felt like a huge game. Everyone inside the stadium could feel it from the first to last whistle and the celebrations amongst the players tells me they can feel it too. The Rangers are coming!
But last night wasn’t only huge because we levelled with Celtic on points at the top of the table. Given Aberdeen’s 9th place league position it may surprise you that this is our first league victory against them in three attempts this season, or not when it’s considered their cup final. Last night couldn’t have been any more stark in contrast to the last time Aberdeen came to Ibrox, which ultimately led to the dismissal of our manager and leaving us trailing Celtic by seven points.
Fast forward nearly five months and the situation at Rangers is very different; qualification to the Europa League last 16, League Cup winners, joint top of the league - for now, culminating in Philippe Clement winning manager of the month and Cyriel Dessers winning player of the month for January.
We showed last night that we are in a title chase:
- We have goals coming from all over the pitch. That’s now back to back games Rabbi Matondo has fired us off the mark and Todd Cantwell is on the scoresheet - five goals in his last seven games and great to see him stepping up at a crucial time of the season.
- We have leaders throughout the pitch orchestrating us to victory, credit to John Lundstram for another top performance which is becoming his standard since the manager came in.
- We didn’t panic after conceding a poor goal at the end of the first half. We re-grouped at half time and went again.
- We have players in the squad who allow for the manager to mix things up depending on the opponent and how the game is going. It was great to see Mohamed Diomande make his Rangers debut and another substitute appearance for fellow new signing, Oscar Cortes. Both players impressed in their limited minutes on the park and hopefully we see more of them when Scott Brown brings his Ayr United side to town.
- We didn’t over react to the constant decisions going against us by the referee, particularly the incident involving Duk - which wasn’t even discussed on Skysports or Sportscene. Instead they focused their attention on a non hand ball by a Rangers player in the box but Kris Boyd summed up the Rangers support as he laughed away the nonsense and hypocrisy.
- We galvanised as a support and team after the ridiculous decision to hand Sterling a straight red card after he slipped. Instead of sitting today and discussing another incident this season which has cost us games we are skipping into the day proud of our team.
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It wasn’t all roses, however:
- In my last article I wrote about us not signing a prolific goalscorer in the January transfer window. Whilst Fabio Silva impressed when he came off the bench, and is beginning to show his quality, he is not a natural goalscorer. There may be a game this season, potentially against Celtic, where we are not creating a high number of chances and need someone to get us something from nothing. Hopefully Dessers or Silva can provide that moment as I feel the league title could come down to the remaining Old Firm matches.
- I was surprised to open up X when I got home from the game and see criticism of our players, Goldson and McCausland in particular. Why do we do that? Why can’t we just be happy? Philippe Clement is a winner. He is ruthless in his pursuit of silverware. Both players stayed on the park until full time which tells its own story and doesn’t need me defending them. Our manager spoke about an alignment amongst everyone. Stay behind the team and let them throw the sharks!
Last night felt huge but every game is and it’s the old cliche that the next game is the biggest, and whilst our manager is only concerned with Rangers and our results, us supporters will keep a close eye on results at the other end of the city and enjoy that we have our first genuine title race in the top flight of Scottish football for over a decade. As Big Marv once famously said, keep believing.
And, finally, make sure you check out our post-match videos from last night's game on our YouTube channel. As you can see here, even last night's SkySports pundits wanted to get involved last night:
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