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Every time Rangers fail to win a game, there seems to be a mass overreaction in terms of where we are, an opinion of the team and manager and a lack of fair and sensible analysis of the performance and where it went wrong. Our support is a very broad church and in any support so large, there will always be a difference in opinions. However, it's also not unreasonable to suggest that the reaction in response to a result that hasn't gone our way is over the top and in many cases the points made are unjustified.
Some supporters have this philosophy of believing in our long term plan (and it is a long term plan), however when 3pm on Saturday comes it suddenly goes out the window and anything less than 3 points or progression in cup competitions will result in insults being flung. It is not behaviour befitting of the Rangers support. We expect our players, management and owners to act with dignity and respect but for a minority of our support this is not possible with their own conduct.
It's equally common to hear "I'd love to see young players develop here" yet slam Barrie McKay as soon as he gets on the ball, despite him probably being our best and most influential player this season. Social media and Twitter especially are full of people disgraced by the Alloa game. That's fair - they are only showing that they don't think it's an acceptable result, and drawing to Alloa is and will never be acceptable for Rangers. However if we take a proper look at the game, a fair reflection would be that we kept a good tempo throughout, passed the ball well, created about 6-8 clear cut chances and between the woodwork, clearance off the line, good keeping and poor finishing came away scoring one goal from 25 attempts.
It really is as simple as a lack of being clinical. We have had 44 shots on goal in our last 180 minutes of football but have scored just once. There have been at least 10 or more clear cut chances that in normal circumstances would be slotted away and the worry right now for the team is that we aren't getting the rewards for our dominant displays due to slack finishing. It is a long term project and requires the support to act with dignity, respect and giving fair and sensible analysis of performances to act with a cool head and then support our team once again.
In return I hope that we will start to take these clear cut chances to get the full rewards for the quality of our play, if we can do this we will not need to fear much this season. It's true, however, that team needs several key additions in the summer to compete at the top of the Premiership, but we should trust Warburton to get it right in player identification and recruitment and the board to back him financially to deliver what the support expects. If we take a step back, we are top of the league with an eight point gap with Hibs bottling the chance to take advantage, have the beating of our nearest league rivals, are in the Petrofac Cup final and remain in the Scottish cup with a potential decent route to the semis if we can sort out our finishing problem. The football we play and average age of the team are also exactly what we have been crying out for. It may be asked more in desperation than hope that our supporters absolutely still give their opinions and criticisms where it's due, but they speak fairly and rationally. Mass over-reactions and in-fighting don't help.