{"id":729950,"date":"2026-08-07T02:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T02:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/729950\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T02:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T02:04:11","slug":"old-habits-haunt-rangers-in-early-mcinnes-tenure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/729950\/","title":{"rendered":"Old habits haunt Rangers in early McInnes tenure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Neither Russell Martin nor Danny Rohl were able to restore past glories in their short stints in Govan while McInnes was taking Hearts to the verge of immortality.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Much of the condemnation surrounding the Ibrox club&#8217;s failures last season came back to the same theme &#8211; they may be fluid and clinical going forward at times, but a soft underbelly put paid to hopes of success.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I thought we gave up too many chances and gave teams too much encouragement,&#8221; the 55-year-old added post match in Poland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We&#8217;ve got to be honest and say we are guilty of beating ourselves tonight. And that&#8217;s no disrespect to our opponent because on transitions and counter-attack, it fuels them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rangers were flailing in the opening 45 minutes as Jagiellonia cut them open with ease, capitalising on numerous lapses in concentration.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Twelve minutes into the game, Thelo Aasgaard tried an audacious spin on the edge of the hosts&#8217; box, attempting to squeeze the ball through a small gap in the defence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">One minute later it was in the back of Rangers&#8217; net following an impressive counter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There&#8217;s no bigger drain on confidence for any player, team, support than losing cheap goals,&#8221; McInnes said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There were mistakes for the goals, and I understand that can happen, but we have got to be far more stingy with our work, defend the goal with our lives, don&#8217;t give our opponent opportunities. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;At no cost is that ball going in our box, at no cost are they going to get a chance, and we&#8217;ve got to have a bit more of that approach to our work.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The central defensive partnership of Dujon Sterling and Emmanuel Fernandez looked particularly shaky.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;If you spoke to McInnes right now without a microphone in front of him, and you asked him, &#8216;Do you trust Fernandez?&#8217;, there&#8217;s no way he says yes, no way,&#8221; former Rangers midfielder Andy Halliday said on BBC Sportsound.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But he doesn&#8217;t have an option at this moment in time to play someone else.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m being very critical here, but I think Fernandez has every attribute to be a top, top central defender, yet it looks as if he hasn&#8217;t had the education growing up of the basics of being a central defender.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Neither Russell Martin nor Danny Rohl were able to restore past glories in their short stints in Govan&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-729950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}