Rangers need to continue ruthless streak with big games on the horizon

Winning ways returned to Ibrox in the Scottish Premiership this past weekend as Rangers hit four past Livingston to register their first points of the campaign.

Goals from Sam Lammers, Danilo, Abdallah Sima and Kieran Dowell ensured the home support had a happy and content Saturday night trip home.

However, it didn’t always look like it could end up that way, as Rangers took until the 78th minute of the match to add a second to effectively kill off any momentum Livingston had left.

Up until that point, Rangers had a produced a performance similar in many way to that Ibrox witnessed last mid-week when Servette came to town.

It was another match in which Rangers looks energic and dominated the ball for large periods of times with a sense of urgency about their play. Whoever, in both cases, it took one moment in the half to take Michael Beale’s side out of their rhythm, and turn each game into a slog for a large period of the match.

Against Servette, it was the awarding of a penalty to the away side, and on Saturday, it was Jose Cifuentes seeing a debut goal disallowed- both after lengthy VAR checks.

It was only after Beale turned to the bench against Livingston that Rangers fully regained a foot hold of the match, with Rabbi Matondo and the aforementioned Sima adding a different dynamic for a tiring Livingston to come up against.

This really wasn’t something Rangers had in abundance of over the last two years – the ability to change a game from the bench. In improving the starting 11 in the summer, it has also allowed Beale to have more options to turn to should a game not be going his side’s way.

When you look back at Livingston’s visit to Govan last October where they left with a point, the home bench consisted of James Sands, Scott Wright and Charlie McCann. At the weekend, we had the luxury of not needing to turn to Kemar Roofe and Ianis Hagi, but still having something fresh when the game needed it.

In recent seasons, Rangers have been criticised of being sheepish in attack. Even when go back to the 55 winning season under Steven Gerrard, there was an argument that our front three could have scored more goals.

So you can understand exactly why Beale has splashed out nearly £15m on new attackers, but the three of Danilo, Lammers and Cyriel Dessers haven’t fully clicked as quickly as we may have liked. So it is important to have that flexibility and rotation from the bench when things aren’t working to the level we need.

If we can get the level of performance from the last 20 minutes Saturday from Rabbi Matondo consistently week-on-week, then it could be a crucial element for Rangers in turning the screw against Celtic.

Ange Postecoglou’s side last season were experts in turning tight matches into four/five nil victories against teams in the lower half of the table – the type of side’s that Rangers would often struggle against with their stubborn low block style.

Beale needs to hope his side continue to do that over the course of the season, especially so in the coming weeks with massive games to come against Servette – who if they were ruthless last week, this would be an easier trip – Morton and Celtic.