THE thing about a stadium like Ibrox is there are very few places to hide. By the end of another slog on Saturday the boos rang out and the Rangers players wanted the ground to swallow them whole. Giovanni van Bronckhorst stood on the touchline, contemplating a damaging draw. Kemar Roofe made a half-hearted gesture to applaud the fans. Alfredo Morelos, shoulders slumped, headed for the tunnel.
None of it made a particularly pretty picture for those of a blue persuasion, especially not in a month that’s seen them twice swatted aside by Liverpool with worrying ease, and with Napoli - arguably Europe’s in-form team - still to come. All is not well in Govan.
But, there’s always two sides to the story, and Rangers’ struggles were as much down to their own fragility as it was Livingston. Joel Nouble’s opener was just seven minutes away from going down as the Lions’ first-ever winner at Ibrox.
No one could have begrudged them that, and they made the most of the home crowd’s unrest. Something former Rangers youngster Andrew Shinnie knows all too well about.
“I remember Ian Durrant used to say that it takes a lot of bravery to play here especially if you go one-nil down as the fans are restless,” said Shinnie, 33. “If you make a bad pass, there are 50,000 breathing down your neck.
“I think most games probably outwith the European games and Celtic teams will come here and try to be strong, keep it solid and hope the crowd get a bit restless.
“It can make players go into their shell. You maybe don’t take as many risks, you take the safer option.
“That’s sort of how we did it. Let them go wide and deal with the balls in. I’m just gutted.”
Those wide balls were just one of the major problems for Rangers. Stuck playing ‘horseshoe football’ - where they work it down one wing, head back to the centre backs, then try up the other (and repeat) - van Bronckhorst’s team only seemed to have one genuine attacking threat. Get the ball to Ryan Kent to cross or wait for Borna Barisic on the overlap to do the same.
Over the piece, Rangers sent in 73 crosses, and most of them were meat and drink to the always impressive Jack Fitzwater and Ayo Obileye, who would still be happily heading them away even now.
“You are never comfortable here but we were strong defensively,” said the one-time Scotland internationalist. “We pride ourselves on not giving many chances to any team we play.
“Coming here, what have you got to do for your game plan? You’ve got to turn the crowd about, make them anxious and in the first 15/20 minutes just stay strong.
“You then go through the phases of the game, get to half-time. Obviously getting the goal early helps, it gives you something to hang onto and to fight for.
“I was thinking after the game that I couldn’t remember Shamal [George] making save after save. There were probably a lot of crosses that he was collecting that were pretty comfortable.
“But they can score in a heartbeat here. It was a great finish to be fair, into the top corner, which is fair play to them. Would we have taken a point before? Probably, yeh. We’ll be happy with that.”
As it was, John Lundstram’s 91st minute strike - and it’s been lost in the fallout just how good a goal it was - was about as much Rangers could muster. Antonio Colak did go close on a few occasions, digging out chances from nothing, but Livi were resolute.
“It’s always a good game plan of ours to tighten up in the middle of the park and deal with crosses,” said Shinnie. “That’s what we did. We were brilliant at dealing with crosses and limiting them to not a lot of chances.
“We got a good goal on the break. Most teams plan here that if you can get a goal ahead, the fans get a bit restless and it can make it difficult. That’s what we did.
“Would we have seen it out if we hadn’t gone down to 10? Who knows.
“That gave their crowd a bit of a boost and their players a boost. They got a point out of it but we are proud of our performance.
“It would have been a great win for us. Would we have deserved it? Probably with the way we fought for it and the way we limited their chances.”
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