match thread (image) [FT] Villarreal 2 - 2 Rangers (Arfield 67; Lafferty 76)

[der Berliner 3,245]

Rob Maclean seems to get ever more fascinated with the Spaniards. Dunno whether he forgot which team is supposed to be his? Apart from telling us about our "shortcomings" ...

[Uilleam 5,410]

So far a Training Day for the Spaniards.

 

[Andaluz Bear 1]

There is a ton of space wide - would like to see Middleton on early.

[Frankie 8,150]

Obviously got off to the worst possible start and after that Villarreal hardly got out of first gear as we contrived to play at walking pace and continually give the ball away.

 

Too many players seem to be half asleep - particularly in the wider areas.  Meanwhile Arfield and Coulibaly seem to have no idea when to press or sit deep.

 

Generally a disappointment but we're still in the game should the manager wish to have a go in the second half.

 

BTW, everyone should know by now that talk of streams is not permitted.

[trublusince1982 243]

We have a terrible habit of fearing teams. That fear sees us sit off and watch them play. 

 

Coulibaly and halliday need to switch roles and Kent needs to come off.

 

Missing Morelos quite a bit for his hold up play and moving the defence about.

 

Wish we would just shrug of the fear and go for it.

[trublusince1982 243]

31 minutes ago, Elisioth said:

Took a knock in the warm up I heard incase anyones wondering, doing ma nut in there

Gerrard said looked jaded in training has played 15/16 games already. No knock or injury

[rbr 1,247]

When we don't turn up , we really don't turn up , still it's only 1-0, there is still belief in my heart lol .

[ian1964 10,411]

Just not getting/keeping hold of the ball, we can get something from this game if we up the pace a bit and start asking questions of them, poor first half though

[Rousseau 9,369]

I feel like this is where their quality shines through.

 

It's a somewhat fortunate goal for them, but McGregor should be doing better. It may be a little mix up with Goldson and Worrall too. 

 

But, it's frustrating because they've not been great, and we've contrived to miss-place even the simplest of passes. If we could string more than two passes together we could actually create some decent openings. 

 

They're retreating into a mid-block, almost letting us pass through that first press, but then we're panicking and going backwards or sideways. If we were braver in passing through, to get Candeias and Kent on the ball, then I think we could create chances. 

 

I never expected much, but I did expect us to do better than we're doing. 

 

It's frustrating because we are much better than this. 

[der Berliner 3,245]

Belated thanks to McLeish for wrecking Jack with Scotland.

 

That worldy within 1 mins wrecked any sort of game plan and we sure never got going for the best part of 30 mins. But they are sure not running over us, we simply don't click from mid to front whatsoever. You'd hope we step out in the second half with some more purpose.

 

The ref is another disaster, Arfield being floored twice and Lafferty once with no reaction whatsoever. 5ß/50s seemingly don't exist.

 

And spare a thought for these poor lads from BT, who have to suffer reporting on Rangers from Spain or in the studio.