Ally McCoist has delivered a brutally honest view on Rangers’ defensive performance against Benfica, labelling it as ‘shocking’ on BT Sport (5/11/20 5:55PM kick-off time).
The Glasgow outfit were uncharacteristically defensively suspect against Benfica, conceding three goals for the first time this season.
Conceding three against a side as quality as Benfica isn’t all that bad, but it’s that much worse when you factor in that the Portuguese outfit had 10-men for the majority of the game.
McCoist certainly wasn’t impressed by what he saw.
“Helander, who had a pretty poor night all round, gives away the ball for the first goal,” McCoist said.
“You’ve got to be honest and say for the first two goals Rangers were defensively shocking.
“Even for the third one, it’s a great run from Darwin but I think the two central defenders, one of them, I think Goldson must step across
“When Darwin takes the yard off of Helander, Goldson must step across, either block him or stop the run.”
McCoist is absolutely right, when you’re playing in such an important game away from home, you have to be more defensively solid, especially when you’re two goals up with just 15 minutes to play.
Fortunately, this may just be a blip for Rangers.
They’ve been one of the most defensively solid teams in Europe this season, conceding just three goals in 13 games in the SPFL so far this term, but they need to buck up their ideas in Europe if they’re to go far in that competition.
Steven Gerrard needs to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
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