Ally McCoist has defended the training regime and level of professionalism at Rangers after the fall-out from losing to Annan Athletic.
Some fans were fiercely critical of the defeat and their mood darkened further when midfielder Kyle Hutton posted an ill-advised tweet at lunchtime on Tuesday saying that he was "off home to finish off Homeland". Many took that as evidence the players were not working hard enough and had too much time off.
But, ahead of today's Irn-Bru Third Division match at Elgin City, McCoist firmly defended how the club is run. "There's not a team in the world that works 9-5pm," he said. "Our training hasn't changed much in the last 30 years. We didn't do too much or too little, just enough for the game. That's the job of every coach as you don't want to undertrain or overtrain players. There's a balance.
"If you are winning every game comfortably and playing fantastically, it's not an issue. Very seldom would someone say 'you're not training hard enough' after that 5-0 victory. The defeat at the weekend brings up questions."
McCoist insisted that he would not give is players extra sessions, or bring them in on a Sunday, simply out of spite. "If you do that and run them as a punishment, like clubs maybe did in 1960, the first thing you end up with is about four injuries. You can't just go negative, negative, negative.
"Don't think for a minute I'd be slow to punish anybody that needs punishing, that has happened and will continue to happen. But I'm not one for knee-jerk, needless punishment. I certainly wouldn't do it for spite. If it was going to benefit the team or certain individuals, I would do it. Of course I would."
Rangers have advised their players on the dangers of social media, specifically Twitter and Facebook, and the squad was given guidance by the police. McCoist will not ban the players from posting on such sites but said players should be governed by common sense before they leave a message that can be seen by the general public.
"I have said on numerous occasions they have to know their responsibilities and pay due care and attention to what they write on these websites. What they write is picked up instantly. In a normal week it [what Hutton posted] was a nothing message but it's the context of it coming after a defeat [to Annan]. He's posed himself a problem with a throwaway line."
Rangers's game at Elgin City is the earliest kick-off in the division today and a win would put them 20 points clear. But Dean Shiels will not feature for the rest of the term because of a knee injury.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article