Rangers stall after fast start

A nice set of wheels is a real passion in the Rangers dressing-room, as one look around the well-stocked car park at their training ground will testify. Yet there is little point in looking flash if you are only going to stall the thing when everyone is looking.

Heart of Midlothian’s performance on Saturday switched from Trabant to BMW, according to Csaba Laszlo, the manager, but it is doubtful if Walter Smith’s mind ran to making such colourful analogies. Rangers roared from nought to 60 with ease, then simply ran out of gas.

Two first-half goals from Kyle Lafferty and Barry Ferguson had Hearts struggling to catch sight of their tail lights. Ferguson spurned another chance, and then Nacho Novo hit the post just after the hour, as Rangers turned on the style – then, they hit two speed bumps.

Christos Karipidis and Ruben Palazuelos struck within four minutes of each other to completely transform the occasion. It required Allan McGregor’s agility in stoppage time to deny Hearts a winner when Calum Elliot burst clear.

The real cost to Rangers, in terms of the title race, has yet to be established. Smith, though, recognises that any side which has gathered just one point from the last two encounters at Ibrox – having lost previously to Inverness Caledonian Thistle – is about as much of a safe bet as the global car industry right now. “We are making it extremely difficult for ourselves,” the manager said. “We have dropped five points in our last two home games. That is difficult to take when we have been the better side for 90 per cent of those two games.

“There is a softness about us and we lack resilience when under pressure. When I took over, people said I needed to make Rangers difficult to beat. I did that and then that was criticised for the way we played, but I think if you had seen this, you might think it’s the right thing after all.”

Smith may have adopted a more expansive game against Hearts in response to last week’s defeat in the Cooperative Insurance Cup final by Celtic, or simply to prove to critics from within the Rangers support who say his team is too functional. Either way, it backfired. A fierce pressing game, whose chief exponent was Ferguson, drove Hearts to distraction for an hour.

The visiting team had failed to take advantage of the absence of the suspended David Weir and injured Madjid Bougherra, and subject the “rookie partnership” of Lee McCulloch and Christian Dailly to any real scrutiny – until Elliot finally rouse Hearts from their apathy.

The Scotland Under21 striker, who came on as a second-half substitute, provided the spark when his fierce shot was touched over the bar by McGregor in the 63rd minute. From Bruno Aguiar’s corner, Karipidis powered a header beyond the goalkeeper to give Hearts a lifeline.

Four minutes later, David Obua shredded Sasa Papac, the Rangers left back, and delivered a cross which Elliot knocked down for Palazuelos and the Spanish midfield player hooked in a sublime left-foot shot from 16 yards.

Later, Laszlo revealed that the Hearts metamorphosis was not the result of an old-fashioned dressing-room rant. The loquacious Hungarian insisted that he used subtler methods.

“Sure, I wanted to kill people,” the Hearts manager said. “I was not angry with them. I had to convince the players to get their confidence back and change the tactics. We played bad in the first half, almost saying to Rangers, ‘Please come and score goals.’ We were a Trabant. But in the second, we were a BMW X5.”

The rapid transformation was largely due to Elliot, who not only gave Hearts an outball that they lacked in the first half with only the laborious Christian Nade – who, to extend Laszlo’s metaphors, is surely an HGV – and also allowed the side to embrace a 4-4-2 system that delivered fresh fluency and zest to Hearts. “The decision about two strikers is up to the manager, he has to make the tactics,” Palazuelos said. “However, I think we play better with 4-4-2. We had more passes and chances in the second half. To come from 2-0 down and draw here is great and Calum had a chance to win it for us. The players were disappointed after losing the Edinburgh derby last week and we had to give something back to the fans.”

It was not what Smith had envisaged when Lafferty – who was later taken off on a stretcher – had swept home an angled shot in the ninth minute before Ferguson doubled that lead just before the interval with his second goal of the campaign.

“We managed to undo, in a few minutes, one of the best performances of the season with a bit of slackness in defence,” Smith said. “It is disappointing when you are chasing the championship to lose a winning position. It feel like a defeat.”

Rangers (4-4-2): A McGregor 8 S Whittaker 7 L McCulloch 5 C Dailly 5 S Papac 6 S Davis 7 B Ferguson 8 P Mendes 6 D Beasley 6 K Boyd 5 K Lafferty 7 Substitutes N Novo 7 (for Lafferty, 36min), S Naismith (for Beasley, 74). Not used N Alexander, M Edu, K Miller, J Fleck, D Wilson.

Hearts (4-5-1): J McDonald 8 R Neilson 7 C Karipidis 7 M Zaliukas 7 L Wallace 6 D Obua 6 R Palazuelos 7 M Stewart 7 B Aguiar 7 D Cesnauskis 4 C Nade 4 Substitutes C Elliott (for Cesnauskis, 46min), M Tullberg (for Nade, 72). Not used M Ridgers, E Jonsson, S Mikoliunas, A Mowriec, D Templeton.

Referee: C Thomson Attendance: 50,310

Taken from timesonline.co.uk