| His nerves have settled a bit after Thursday night's display but Killie Billy still has reservations about the current Rangers team and isn't over-confident about Sunday's clash with Aberdeen. |
We muddled through on Thursday, that is the best we can say about Rangers' victory over Molde. When we need our goalkeeper to play out of his skin to beat a team facing relegation in the Norwegian League, we obviously don't have our problems to seek. But we won the game, we are still in the UEFA Cup and, on the night, that is all that mattered.
However, the Premier League is where we must now focus our attention and the arrival of the Sheepies should be enough to raise the noise level around Ibrox on Sunday. It is hard to believe that we failed to beat them in all four games last season – were we really that bad? – and that very statistic, allied to our present iffy form, will see to it that the Two Jimmies have their team believing they can again get a result.
With Septic and the Jambos beginning to pull away at the top, we can't afford to fall any further behind or it will be just like last season all over again. The message has to ring out that we are not going to be sucked into the battle for the minor placings. Between now and our visit to Tynecastle on November 19, we must pick up maximum points to keep the pressure on the leading pair and to leave the mid-table scrappers behind.
Prior to Sunday's game we'll no doubt get the tannoy message warning us about those nasty songs we might be inclined to sing. Meanwhile, Dolly & Co will be free to sing about the Ibrox Disaster, Ian Durrant and nobody in the Press Box will hear a thing or, in the case of the Corduroy Cowbhoy, he'll convince himself he heard something else entirely. So next time Rangers want to hand out bland statements praising the crowd's behaviour like they did on Thursday, they might also draw attention to the poison we have to listen to from opposing fans.
I'd love to think we could give our friends in the north a proper doing but I'm just not convinced we have it in us. We are still guilty of making one pass too many when a situation is crying out for somebody to put their foot through the ball and let rip. If we fail to get an early goal, you just know the Sheep will grow in confidence and, with our back-line still struggling to come together, they can cause us major problems.
It is worrying to see Boydie so often isolated up front. I'd like to see somebody – Dado, Buffy, anybody – play a bit closer to the big man to get the benefit of his flick-ons in the air or wee touches on the ground. But all too often this season he has won the fifty-fifty balls, only to find defenders mopping things up because his team-mates and just a couple of yards too far away.
On Thursday night, the job should have been done before the interval but, at just 2-0, the loss of a goal would have worried us and, had it happened, I'm convinced we would have contrived to throw it all away. Thankfully, Allan McGregor made sure we didn't get into the nerve-jangling situation and we've got Tuesday's draw and a couple of wee jaunts to look forward to.
It would be great to go into the draw with a convincing Sunday afternoon shift behind us.
KILLIE BILLY |
>> Terms & Conditions