I’m going to stick my neck out and point to Jack Stephens as being heavily involved, if not central, to the problem. People like Downes and THB might well be part of a rotten core, but my intuition is that Jack never really grew out of the influence of Charlie Austin. There’s also the issue of the captaincy which he might feel some resentment about.
Tbh there is an argument that basically anyone who was here last season could be being referred to here. From a mental perspective a season like that is obviously going to have a negative effect and wouldn’t surprise me at all if any player last season is still in a very negative mindset and that is effecting the overall mood at the club. Look at a side like Man United who over the last decade have consistently brought in top players/managers and under achieved with these managers/players not performing. Then when they leave they become very good players again. There is a general malaise around the club and think that is where we are currently (obviously on a much smaller scale to Utd)
Playing Archer with 3 CBs and WBs is akin to Pellegrino playing Shane Long as a solo striker and lobbing crosses in from deep to him, it's never going to function well and is not making best use of our resources. Almost everyone can see it except the manager and I think it is this ultra safety first mindset that is permeating to the players. I honestly think that the squad is at minimum in the top 6 and is currently massively underperforming. I also have reservations about Will Still's man management which is compounding the current malaise around the club. The Pellegrino season was probably my least favourite ever apart from last season and if things continue as they are the I can see the attendances falling sharply unless there are some changes soon.
The trouble at the time as I recall was that there was rarely anyone else in the box for him to play it to. Shane was great in a pair doing the donkey work for his partner.
Just to put my two-pennyworth in. I actually feel some sympathy for Still. He reminds me, to a degree ,of some other people we've all encountered in our lives. He looks and sounds, uncomfortable and distracted. After half-time v Blackburn Saints team and Will were waiting in the tunnel for the Blackburn team to appear. Mrs said to me "Poor Will, dear old boy" he looked so unhappy had no interaction with the players but stood awkwardly to one side like the unpopular kid at school who would love to be accepted but is ignored by his peers. OK I'm an old softie but I do feel for him. That said, I do accept that, if he is weak in man-management, that he is unsuitable to be a football manager. I personally still think there is something there and I hope he stays until Xmas, lets get behind him and the team and hope that the results improve. If they don't, I accept he'll have to go and get someone like Mobray in.
Most sensible post I have read for a while, really well thought out and written. Shows the benefits of taking your time to post something as most of us, myself included can be a bit reactionary at times(it's only because we care). I agree with pretty much everything here.
When you're one of the bigger fishes, I feel you need to have a swagger about you. Teams should come to your ground and expect you to go at them, put them under pressure and dominate. It's what all of the best "bigger" sides do ... not conservative 3-5-2 formations or knocking it around at the back for minutes on end. You go for the jugular and you go for it from the off. Just reading about Rohl's first Ibrox game and it screams of all the things we need Still to be doing at St.Marys. Some key points from the BBC article ... "There was nothing rigid about this Rangers side - flexibility and adaptability were the watch words." "The whole team moved up the pitch quicker, the passing was sharper and with the overloads in the wide areas" "Up until Sunday, much of Rangers' football had been somewhat laboured and predictable. There was more energy and speed in the first domestic display of the Rohl regime." "The Ibrox crowd certainly fed off the newfound intensity from the players" "The supporters could see that the new head coach was trying something a bit different and was getting a response from his players. For the first time this season, is a proper synergy emerging between head coach, players and fans?" https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cdjrxgk8v4eo
A team usually reflects the manager and with Will being very young in his first job in England he is a bit timid in his decisions and maybe not inspirational enough in the dressing room.
Don’t. Not going the extra mile to secure Röhl is the thing that pisses me off the most. There must have been a way, and the fact he’ll likely show how good he is up there makes me so sad!
It's just one league game for Rohl and so it might well not go well over the distance but he did exactly what he needed to do with the Ibrox crowd in his first home game ... he got them on side by giving his team the remit to show swagger. I don't dislike Still and I'm sure he is a capable football coach but right now he looks like someone that's won a Daily Echo competition to be the Saints manager for a day - I'm not sure he's yet got the respect from the players to get them to do what he's perhaps asking them to do. Maybe he's too timid? Makes me wonder whether when Poch came in and everybody wondered who he was, he just played videos of himself playing for Argentina at a World Cup and they players duly stood up and went ... "ah right, fair play actually - you probably do know a thing or two"
