Rangers endured a frustrating afternoon at Fir Park but maintain a substantial lead at the top of the Premiership
Steven Gerrard believes Rangers only played to their potential in the second half against Motherwell.
It was a frustrating afternoon for the league leaders at Fir Park, as they dropped points in the Premiership for the first time since September.
That meant Gerrard’s men passed up the opportunity to equal the record of 16 consecutive league wins set by Jock Wallace’s side in the 1972/73 season.
Substitute Cedric Itten drew Rangers level 18 minutes from time, but despite having 16 shots and 73% of the possession there was to be no winning goal.
The result means Rangers are now 21 points ahead of Celtic, who have three games in hand.
Speaking after the match on Sky Sports, Gerrard said: “I don’t think we’ve got any complaints in terms of the result.
“I think it took us 45 minutes to come into the game. Disappointed with our showing in the first half. We had to get into them a little bit at half-time, and I thought we were really good in the second half.
“Over the course of the 90 minutes we probably deserved to win it on chances, and on our second-half showing, but the reality is we can’t come to a game at half-time when we are where we are.”
“I don’t think we started the game in the right place, what we prepared for.
“I thought we were passive out of possession, in too many key areas on the pitch, and even when we knocked a few passes together and got into good areas our quality wasn’t there.
“Our front three, who we’re relying on to create for us and get shots off and provide some magic, it wasn’t there in the first 45, so we got into them at half-time.
“Had to make substitutions to send them a message, and I thought the lads showed a lot of belief and character and played as a completely different team for the second 45, but the disappointing thing is that there were two sides of us today.
Reflecting on the final half-hour of last Sunday’s 2-1 win over Aberdeen, which saw Gerrard accuses his side of playing “walking football”, he said: “I think there’s two things as a manager you don’t want your team to do. You don’t want to start a game late, for sure, and you can’t leave games early, especially given what we’re playing for.
“So, we spoke to the players about leaving the game early last week. It could have been dangerous but we managed to get through it. Today we haven’t really been ourselves and come to the game until half-time, which is on me and on us, and it’s something that we’ll look at moving forward.
“We were dominant second-half and I expected the reaction. We were much better. We managed to get some quality in from the sides. Cedric’s come on and scored a good goal, but we can’t wait to be in that situation to get that reaction.
“That reaction’s got to come from the beginning of the game. That’s the thing that I’m disappointed with today, that we took so long getting going.
“But hopefully this will be a valuable point come the end of the season, so I’ll look at the positives as well.
“There were a lot, especially in the second half.”
Rangers are next in action on Saturday when they welcome Ross County to Ibrox.
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