At this stage of the season, winning is really all that matters for Rangers as they look to claim what would have been an unlikely league title seven months ago.<\/p>\n
Performances are secondary and perhaps it is just as well because Danny Rohl’s side have yet to fully convince despite churning out victories.<\/p>\n
Here they created more chances than United and ultimately deserved their win – but in the first half their midfield struggled and they relied on some poor defending from the visitors to get in front.<\/p>\n
Firstly, Naderi was presented with a gift by goalkeeper Ashley Maynard-Brewer when he flapped at Aasgaard’s shot from the edge of the box.<\/p>\n
And then Rangers capitalised when Naderi was completely unmarked at a throw-in, eventually working the ball to Sterling who did enough to convert with some help from Iovu.<\/p>\n
The introduction of Gassama and Youssef Chermiti at half-time improved Rangers as an attacking force, with the former delivering the ball on a plate for Aasgaard to make it 3-1.<\/p>\n
While Chermiti’s driving run and pass helped Miovksi score the crucial fourth goal, the Portuguese striker should have netted at least one himself when presented with good chances.<\/p>\n
That profligacy and slack defending from John Souttar and Jayden Meghoma, as well as an open approach to the game, meant the home fans had to suffer a far more nervous ending than they should have.<\/p>\n
But the importance of applying psychological pressure to Hearts by usurping them, however briefly it may be, was huge and Rangers did enough to make it happen.<\/p>\n
As for United, this was a microcosm of their season. A lot of good pressure without the ball, as well as Fatah and others shining on the break.<\/p>\n
The Swedish forward’s clean finish after stepping inside Souttar following a driving run from Emmanuel Agyei was superb. As was his pass inside Meghoma for Luca Stephenson, who set up Sapsford for the second goal.<\/p>\n
However, they were held back by some really poor defending. The mistakes for the first two goals in particular were frustrating given the positive start United had made.<\/p>\n
The fact they have not won back-to-back league games this season sums up their inconsistency and even manager Jim Goodwin would probably concede they do not deserve to finish in the top half.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At this stage of the season, winning is really all that matters for Rangers as they look to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-564468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}