“What Ange Postecoglou has done has been remarkable. His team can be breathtaking. That’s a level Rangers have to try and reach,” Brian Laudrup…
Whilst opposition feel overwhelmed by Celtic’s strength in depth, former Ibrox winger Brian Laudrup is hoping the Alfredo Morelos one man show will be enough to let theRangers hang in there in the title race, so unimpressed was he by the stand in options available while Morelos was on international duty with Colombia.
While Celtic can now rotate the likes of Daizen Maeda and Giorgos Giakoumakis, as Kyogo Furuhashi returns from injury, Laudrup was left unimpressed by theRangers back up options of Cedric Itten, Kemar Roofe or Fashion Sakala. Though you’d also have to question any team reliant on the unpredictable and volatile Alfie.
Writing in his Daily Mail column Laudrup states quite sharply his feelings on the striking strength in depth at Ibrox.
“When Morelos was called up by Colombia, we asked who could fill the gap he left. Would it be Cedric Itten, Kemar Roofe or Fashion Sakala? The answer, bluntly, was none of them. Not in terms of an individual performance level nor what it meant for the team.”
As much as Laudrup was left unimpressed by his former team’s lack of firepower he did take the time out to be magnanimous in defeat and praise the work Ange Postecoglou has been carrying out at Celtic and the performance he witnessed from Celtic in the Glasgow Derby, as he claimed Celtic were now the benchmark for theRangers and any slip up before the sides meet again could result in real damage to any challenge from Ibrox.
Abada coming in at the back post pic.twitter.com/odzU3IaN6O
— Rabbit Slippers (@HoopyDays1967) February 6, 2022
“What Ange Postecoglou has done has been remarkable, really. His team can be breathtaking at times, but they have also shown proper consistency since the winter break. That’s a level (the)Rangers have to try and reach.
“I think this title race will go to the wire. But Van Bronckhorst has to make sure a gap isn’t allowed to grow before Celtic come to Ibrox on April 4. Any drop to the levels seen at Parkhead or even against Ross County beforehand could be immensely damaging.
“I could hardly believe what I was watching in the Old Firm(sic) game. Celtic were excellent 100 per cent but (the)Rangers were astonishingly bad in that first 45 minutes. You can always lose a derby game. Of course you can. Sometimes you go out to do your best and it just doesn’t happen.
“But an impression of lacking the necessary effort was the main theme last Wednesday night. (the)Rangers knew they could get away from Celtic with a good result but they didn’t turn up. You can look at the personnel picked and at the performances of individual players. At the end of the day, though, it was a team that simply didn’t look ready for what was thrown at them by Celtic. There was a collective failure.”
You certainly know theRangers are feeling the pressure when their own club legends are praising Ange Postecoglou’s revolution, but you really see the desperation when the same former star is pinning his hopes on the likes of Alfredo!
Niall J
