Agreed. Hardly ideal.
Thought Smalling was quite impressive, looks smooth on the ball and solid in the defence. Only thing is he did manage to clear the ball into touch when he had the time to lookup and pickup a midfielder.
Too many guys up front going missing, couldn't believe to see Berba not even on the bench, and then Owen on instead of Macheda. That sort of lineup should be playing next week in the Carling Cup, not this morning.
It is interesting that it seems against teams who are prepared to sit very deep with lots of men behind the ball that the best way to counter this is possibly to not press them so high up the pitch and allow them to attack, maybe even only press in your own half or deeper to create space for your team to attack.
A perfect example was the Inter-Barca game last year, Inter sitting deep and not wanting the ball to remain in position and Barca in a way played into Inter's hands. Maybe if Barca allowed Inter to come at them and try and attack with speed while Inter were not in their defensive shape. However, Rangers is not Inter Milan. Should do better, and again shows the lack of depth in CM.
Agree totally. I thought that a couple of times this morning - there were two occasions when they pushed forward when catching them on the counter was a real possibility - especially once where Park almost set Rooney through in the first half.
The lack at CM I also agree, as i was walking home from work I was thinking about how Fletcher stepped up a few times and played some lovely balls, and Gibson's got the shot (but little else), but Scholes does both. The dependance on Paul Scholes is quite a worry. Here's hoping a fit Anderson might offer something different.