DMAA

Sofascore notification popped up with the lineups and they have never been wrong before, and had Butland not in the squad, and I was panicking that the bust up rumour was true. Very relieved to see the lineup in the Rangers tweet! Very unfortunate to have Davies and Souttar out with a bug at this stage of preseason. Potentially a bit disastrous with crucial games coming up fast.

I don’t think Gio was playing anything remotely like Guardiola inspired football.

It looked to me to be switching between a diamond and a Christmas tree type set up, with Lammers behind Dessers but Sima switching between being high beside Dessers when we do have the ball but being in line with Lammers when we don’t have the ball. When we played the Christmas tree formation under Gerrard, we had Kamara/ Davis, Jack and Aribo in the 3. I’d say that’s a much more solid 3 with 2 traditional centre mids and 1 more attack minded. At the moment, we only have Raskin who is a traditional centre mid, with basically 3 attack minded midfielders in front of him. I don’t see the balance there at all, and it shows. One thing that is consistent in football is that defenders look terrible when they aren’t protected by the midfield. I think there is too much focus on personnel in defence and not enough on the system and the protection from the midfield.

I’ve always believed that friendlies do give you a pretty good idea of how the team is shaping up. It isn’t just a workout. Especially when you are testing out a whole new system. There should be signs that it is working.

Lundstram is just a distinctly average player and very boring to watch. I wish we could sell and replace.

Did you not see the replay? Deflected away from him.

Yilmaz instantly creates something

Sima has been pretty unconvincing tbh. I think I’d rather him on the right.

Never a penalty but look at the state of them. It’s a friendly!

I suspect that change is about seeing how copes in a very competitive match.

Yeh, we need to get Dessers up to speed asap. Fortunately, Danilo will be coming fully match fit I believe.

A bit of bad luck about the goal. It’s no coincidence that it came after a spell of Olympiacos moving the ball really well from side to side and stretching us though. Not great from Davies with the missed clearance. Lammers, Souttar and Davies look good. Cantwell in flashes. Not sure anyone else has shown much?

The other whipping boy, Ben Davies, has been pretty good though.

Would like Sima to be a bit quicker with the ball. Slowed things down a few times when he’s got it.

Why is that a free kick these days? The player ran into him. It’s only obstruction if you move to block the person.

Missed a trick not getting the away top sponsored by Aquafresh. Bisgrove is normally on top of that kind of thing.

Sterling is by far the strongest competition Tav has had. I don’t expect him to displace him though.

Ooft. Very early to say that. Apparently he barely impressed in the B team last season.

I don't really know how Lammers got man of the match? Looks ok, but pretty wasteful in the final third.

Looks a very promising player

I like the look of Dessers. Has a presence about him.

Would have liked to see a bit more of an identity forming. Still looks a bit disjointed to me.

Sakala makes both goals lol

Not much quality on display.

From looking at the stats, I don’t think any of our signings are prolific goalscorers. Danilo and Dessers underperform their xG slightly, Lammers underperforms it significantly, and Sima outperforms it but his xG is quite low in comparison. Caveat being that it's impossible to know for sure from those stats because they all played at different clubs in different leagues and with different roles. I don't think it matters if they aren't as clinical as Colak for example because they seem to have a variety of skills and abilities and I expect all will score plenty, maybe with the exception of Lammers who will probably score at a moderate rate but might create a bit more. I'm just glad that we seem to have recruited a lot of goalscorers in the forward positions, having relied heavily on right back and the whole team to chip in in recent seasons (my favourite player Ryan Kent scored 3 in 44 games last season!). Looking forward to seeing Dessers today!