![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0_rohl6.png\")
Rangers boss Danny Rohl <\/p>\nRangers remain a pretty horrible watch and it\u2019s difficult to consider them as serious runners in this season\u2019s title raceRangers boss Danny Rohl <\/p>\n
With the big day only a week or so away, it\u2019s all beginning to look a lot like an optical illusion.<\/p>\n
Rangers<\/a> don\u2019t appear on face value anything remotely close to genuine title contenders. And yet here they are, one Tynecastle win away from all their Christmases coming at once before the turn of the year.<\/p>\n In many ways Danny Rohl<\/a> deserves a great deal of credit for whipping this team into some semblance of shape or, at the very least, finding a way of making these players capable of winning a great deal more games of football than they previously had been.<\/p>\n But \u2013 and let\u2019s be brutally honest here \u2013 Rangers remain a pretty horrible watch and for that reason alone it\u2019s difficult to consider them as serious runners in this season\u2019s race to the top flight finishing line.<\/p>\n Even though the numbers are starting to make a very strong argument otherwise.<\/p>\n As a matter of undeniable fact, the stats are actually quite startling. Rangers struggled through eight league games before Rohl was appointed to the position of head coach. Russell Martin was holding the fort for seven of them<\/a>, winning only one against Livingston, drawing five and losing the other at home to Hearts<\/a>. Martin\u2019s big, blue sky vision for this team was a wretched mess.<\/p>\n He picked up a paltry total of eight points from a possible 21 before being removed from his misery.<\/p>\n And even when he had gone, Rangers dropped another couple of points at Ibrox against Dundee United before Rohl was shoehorned into the position at the end of October.<\/p>\n All of which meant the 36-year-old German was taking over a team which had taken nine points from 24 and was sitting with a win rate of just 12.5 per cent.<\/p>\n Rohl\u2019s record is actually quite remarkable by comparison, when it comes to crunching the numbers.<\/p>\n He\u2019s also been in charge for eight Premiership games, winning six of them and drawing the other two. That adds up to a total of 20 points from a possible 24 and a win rate of 75 per cent.<\/p>\n Purely in terms of the black and white, this has been a truly staggering turnaround.<\/p>\n Rangers have been transformed from a team which collected only 33.33 per cent of the points available before Rohl\u2019s arrival to one which has scooped up a whopping 83.33 per cent of those up for grabs over the last two months.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, this run makes them the form team in the country right now, at a moment in time when the normal rules and established order of Scottish football feels like it\u2019s disappearing through the looking glass.<\/p>\n And so, in terms of the hard evidence and based on all of the collated data, Rohl and his players should be heading across the M8 on Sunday morning with a mountain of momentum at their backs.<\/p>\n If Rohl adds another win to his growing collection then he will also be cutting the gap between his side and the pace setters to just six points.<\/p>\n And, with a game in hand on his side into the bargain, at that point it would become almost impossible not to consider Rangers as credible challengers.<\/p>\n And yet the evidence of the eyes suggests something very different to be the case.<\/p>\n Anyone who watched Rohl\u2019s side lumber its way to a 1-0 win over Hibs on Monday night couldn\u2019t possibly have seen them as the real deal. On the contrary, they look absolutely nothing like a team which is fit to offer up a sustainable title fight.<\/p>\n So, while the numbers stacking up suggest one thing, the reality is likely to prove that the eyes have had it all along.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not an optical illusion to conclude that Hearts have a better quality of player in almost all areas of the pitch as well as a manager who, unlike Rohl, has the benefit of a wealth of experience to fall back on now that the season is reaching such a critical point.<\/p>\n One quick glance at the top flight standings is all that\u2019s required to prove that Derek McInnes<\/a> has been the country\u2019s outstanding boss throughout the current campaign.The table simply does not lie.<\/p>\n And even though his side recently experienced a fairly troubling mid-season wobble, Hearts re-established and copper bottomed their credentials with a statement win over Celtic in Glasgow\u2019s east end<\/a>, little more than a week ago.<\/p>\n That\u2019s twice they\u2019ve taken down the champions this season. It will become a truly seismic double double if McInnes and his men also go on to inflict a second defeat on Rangers this weekend.<\/p>\n And why should they be doubted?<\/p>\n In Lawrence Shankland<\/a> and Claudio Braga their attack is spearheaded by the two most prolific frontmen in the league. Both of them have helped themselves to eight goals so far this season and will fancy their chances of adding some more against a flawed Rangers defence which convinces no-one.<\/p>\n Without first picks John Soutar and Derek Cornelius, Rohl\u2019s last line looks like an accident waiting to happen.<\/p>\n Granted, the return to fitness of Dujon Sterling – a player of considerable quality and one capable of strengthening a number of positions – is a timely boost for the manager.<\/p>\n But not even an operator as versatile as Sterling can cover all of these positions at once.<\/p>\n On Monday night, Rohl deployed Sterling on the right hand side of a back three but, by altering his formation, he also lost Nico Raskin from his midfield.<\/p>\n The Belgian may be carrying a slight knock but his presence will be essential on Sunday if Rangers are to have any hope of holding its own against a Hearts midfield which has been dominating matches since the season began.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a strong argument that Cammy Devlin has been the player of the season so far as the little Aussie has been performing like a man possessed.<\/p>\n And, at the back, Craig Halkett and Stewart Findlay, have combined to become the most formidable and robust central defensive pairing in the league.<\/p>\n For all of these reasons and more it\u2019s hard to see how such a comparatively flimsy Rangers side can get in and out of Edinburgh this weekend without being exposed for what it really is this Christmas.<\/p>\n An optical illusion and a side without a snowball\u2019s chance of mounting a genuine tilt at this season\u2019s title.<\/p>\n Tune in to Hotline Live<\/a> every Sunday to Thursday and have your say on the biggest issues in Scottish football and listen to Record Sport’s newest podcast, Game On<\/a>, every Friday for your sporting fix, all in bitesize chunks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rangers remain a pretty horrible watch and it\u2019s difficult to consider them as serious runners in this season\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,18282,129883,188850,596,188852,194354,8998,9003,85],"class_list":["post-354436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celtic-fc","tag-danny-rohl","tag-derek-mcinnes","tag-football","tag-hearts-fc","tag-lawrence-shankland","tag-rangers-fc","tag-scottish-premiership","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Emmanuel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0_Rangers-v-Hibernian-William-Hill-Premiership.jpg\")
Emmanuel Fernandez of Rangers celebrates (Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n![\"Hearts'](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0_Heart-of-Midlothian-v-Kilmarnock-William-Hill-Premiership.jpg\")
Hearts’ Lawrence Shankland (L) celebrates scoring to make it 1-0 with Pierre Landry Kabore vs Kilmarnock(Image: SNS Group)<\/p>\n