Do Not Lose - We Cannot Afford it.

[Zappa 0]

Do Not Lose - We Cannot Afford it.

 

 

This coming Sunday afternoon The Light Blues travel to the familiar territory of Hampden for this season's CIS League Cup Final with the intention of going out on the famous park against St.Mirren and winning the club's 26th League Cup trophy.

 

For various reasons I feel this is a game that we simply cannot afford to lose and I'll try to explain why.

 

There's the small, but obvious difference in prize money between winning the Cup and coming off second best as runners up, but despite the fact that our club needs every bit of cash it can get, there's a far more important reason that we can't afford to lose this Cup Final. That reason isn't taking our first trophy of the season back to Ibrox or putting another League Cup trophy notch in the history books. That reason is confidence and morale.

 

Our club cannot afford to lose the SPL title this season. We literally have to win it.

 

Despite the fact that we're in pole position to win our 53rd league title thanks to the commanding 13 point gap we've opened up in the table, the league is never over until it's over.

 

A hell of a lot of people; Rangers fans, Celtic fans and non Old Firm fans are suggesting that we've already got this league sewn up. They're suggesting that there's no way we'll drop enough points for our city rivals in the east end to catch us. Well, perhaps it's a good time to show some prudence because every football team in the world is beatable. Every football team in the world gets beaten by teams they expect to beat and are expected to beat.

 

We have an extremely tough run of fixtures coming up and we shouldn't take them lightly. The players and management do try not to take any game lightly despite how it may sometimes appear to us fans.

 

To secure this 53rd title we need the whole team to keep up their confidence, their morale and the all-important team spirit because not doing so could cause us to drop more points than we anticipate. Yes, we're likely to drop some points in this fixture congested part of the season, but we want to drop as few as possible in order to make this SPL trophy ours mathematically and as soon as possible!

 

Winning this CIS Cup Final on Sunday can help our team to do this, while losing it could be a sucker punch because losing a Cup Final always has the potential to dent confidence, lower morale and even dilute team spirit through weakening strong bonds. These things have a snowball effect whereby losing a Cup Final could potentially cause the loss of the next league match and so on and so on.....

 

I certainly believe that we'll win the SPL title this season, but Sunday could incredibly play a very big part in doing it.

 

http://www.gersnetonline.co.uk/2010/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=234:do-not-lose-we-cannot-afford-it-&catid=1:articles&Itemid=67

[Frankie 8,105]

Yeah, Sunday's result showed me two things:

 

1. Despite their lip service in the media, too many of our players still don't do enough for 90mins in matches.

 

2. Despite the confidence from the fans about the title, it wouldn't take much for panic to set in.

 

As such, a solid win this weekend would certainly help morale and confidence ahead of tougher matches in our schedule. Winning the cup we lost to Celtic last year is a good start but much more will be required from every player before the end of the season.

 

From the key figures such as Davis and Boyd to the oft-criticised fringe lads like Naismith and Lafferty; we'll need every one of our squad to step up and show their quality and desire if we're to secure the title.

 

Anything else doesn't bear thinking about.

[Bluedell 5,329]

1. Despite their lip service in the media, too many of our players still don't do enough for 90mins in matches.

 

 

What players do you have in mind?

[Frankie 8,105]

What players do you have in mind?

 

Probably most of the team to be fair - although I appreciate not all are in the media...

 

Too many of the players seem to lack motivation (self or otherwise) but I've been particularly disappointed with Papac, Miller and Boyd of late.

 

With so few credible replacements some find it all too easy to not put in the kind of work-rate that should be minimal as a Rangers player.

[Bluedell 5,329]

Probably most of the team to be fair - although I appreciate not all are in the media...

 

Too many of the players seem to lack motivation (self or otherwise) but I've been particularly disappointed with Papac, Miller and Boyd of late.

 

With so few credible replacements some find it all too easy to not put in the kind of work-rate that should be minimal as a Rangers player.

 

I don't think that the effort/work rate that they have put in is up for question. Foe example, Boyd was crap against Utd, but I wouldn't question his work rate. He just had a bad game.

[Zappa 0]

1. Despite their lip service in the media, too many of our players still don't do enough for 90mins in matches.

.

That's one of my main concerns and one of the reasons I wanted to write this article Frankie. The club's PR machine went into overdrive this week in what was (IMO) nothing short of scrambling to flood the press with positive interviews etc in order to drown out the negative aftermath of what happened on Sunday. They were quite right to do that as well because it's also part of keeping up the team's confidence, morale etc, but what I have a problem with is the 'lip service' as you put, interfering with training & preparation, especially when they seem to be able to talk the talk better than they can walk the walk most of the time in terms of quality of performance. Most managers will say that the all important thing to concentrate on is the next game, take one game at a time. Well I want our management team and players to be putting in xtra effort to prepare for going out and winning the CIS Cup final this weekend, not putting in xtra effort to stoke the PR machine and cover up for Sunday's disappointment.

[Frankie 8,105]

I don't think that the effort/work rate that they have put in is up for question. Foe example, Boyd was crap against Utd, but I wouldn't question his work rate. He just had a bad game.

 

For me, it hasn't been good enough lately and I think his overall fitness can be questioned again as he appears to have lost a half-yard of pace since before his injury.

 

However, I appreciate a hernia operation may mean a few weeks of recovery period (in or out of the team) so hopefully he'll regain the sharpness we've seen earlier this season.

 

Papac is one of my favourite players but has been similarly poor recently. Obviously with Whittaker playing right back, that means Papac won't be going forward as much as when Broadfoot plays on the other flank but I've been disappointed with his lack of awareness in particular of late.

 

Sunday's Cup Final is an ideal time to turn on the style again so hopefully every player will have taken the Utd result as the kick up the arse we needed.

[Zappa 0]

I don't think that the effort/work rate that they have put in is up for question. Foe example, Boyd was crap against Utd, but I wouldn't question his work rate. He just had a bad game.

.

I was really disappointed with Boyd's effort and work rate in the first 15 maybe 20 mins of the game. He wasn't the only culprit, but I spotted him on quite a few occasions just ball watching in midfield when we were in possession and an attack was possible. Instead of making a run into space, splitting or stretching DUTD he just looked thoroughly uninterested and that's not good enough. It was only for a short period and as I said, he wasn't the only culprit on Sunday, but short periods like that can win or lose games. Had we played the way we can play as a team, that short period could have seen Miller and Boyd scoring 3 goals between them, but they just weren't at the races.

[Gers4Life 0]

We have went off the boil lately and we really need to pick it up again and a good cup win on sunday could be the ideal tonic to kick start the engines of confidence and lead us on to the 5 games we need to win the title.

[wabashcannonball 0]

Why can't we afford to lose, is this one game the catalyst for everything final or no final. If we lose which we won't...is that the season over ?