Barry Ferguson cut a frustrated figure as he addressed Rangers’ 2-2 League draw with St. Mirren in Paisley on Saturday afternoon.
“Well I never got the three points I demanded. You can’t come to a place like St Mirren, lead the game twice, and give a couple of sloppy goals away. That’s exactly what we’ve done – and that’s been our Achilles heel, not just since I’ve come in, but for a long time. So overall I’m really disappointed.
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“When you spend a week sitting down both individually and collectively, working on things and showing them what you want the team to do, and they don’t carry it out at times, it’s frustrating. When we carried it out, we scored two goals, we played the ball quickly, two or three touch. Then at times we go back to the way it was a few months ago: pedestrian, slow and that’s not the way that I want my team to play, it’s certainly not the way that we train. When we go that way, that then allows St Mirren, in my opinion, back into the game.
“Listen, it’s something that’s been playing in my mind for a number of weeks. It’s the frustrating part because when we do move the ball quickly we’re a good team and when we don’t, we look really average and we’re easy to play against. Again, it’s just really frustrating when you obviously work at things and then at times they don’t carry it out.
“It’s my job to try to change that in the remaining four games. When you want players to take instruction and they don’t, it’s certainly going to frustrate me and I’m going to make my feelings known. I made my feelings known at half-time and I certainly made my feelings known after the game.”
He acknowledged that any apprehension of playing Rangers has at present diminished somewhat.
“The issue I’ve got is people don’t fear playing Rangers now. Whether that’s at home or away, they enjoy coming to Ibrox. When you go away from home, teams look to see if they can bully you, run hard at you and get in about you – and that’s something that, again, needs to change going forward. You need to build a strong team domestically – and I’m sure whoever takes the job will hopefully totally understand that.”
The Interim Manager is only all too well aware that there will be major changes at the club before the new campaign is off and running.
“I’ve told them, even if you’re in contract, everybody’s playing for their future. There’s going to be a lot of changes – and there needs to be a lot of changes.
“I said that last week after the game in Spain. As we all know, we’re coming to the end of the season and it’s a short period that you get off and then you’re straight back into pre-season. Then you’ve got qualifiers for Europe and before you know it, the season starts.”
Next up for Rangers is of course the visit of Celtic to Ibrox Stadium next Sunday in the final ‘Old Firm’ encounter of the current campaign.
“Every game you play for Rangers should mean something. Every game you cross that white line when you’re representing this club, it should mean everything to you. We’ll have a day off and then we’ll get back to work. One thing is I’ll be coming in with my sleeves rolled up and ready to go, so will my staff, and the players better be too…”
Robert McElroy
