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Rangers sealed a victory at Queen of the South despite playing with a combination of the usual profligacy with new added clowncar defending thanks to Kenny Miller volleying in his 100th goal of the season.
Mark Warburton named an exciting, attacking lineup, but the familiar problems were there as Nicky Clark was added to the growing list of players who seem to be effective off the bench but awful when starting. Over-elaborate play, poor transitions, wayward finishing and awful defending meant that Rangers were very, very fortunate to get all three points here. It was, apparently, just "one of those days."
The thing about "one of those days" is that, by implication, they're only supposed to happen once every so often. If they happen every week, they're quite literally "one of those days", as in, one of those things where the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening. That's how it is for Rangers. Since teams realised we weren't managed and staffed by idiots anymore, they've been packing their defences and launching direct counter-attacks against us, and it's working every single week. When the team smuggles away three points after playing atrociously, the feeling is supposed to be relief and an ability to move on. That's not possible when there's no reason to suspect things won't be exactly the same the game after.
There are a number of reasons for this, but here's a non-exhaustive list: Poor transition play means we can't make the most of rare space opening up, few players who can produce something special out of nothing, no prolific natural striker, our only midfielder who is decent at having a go from the edge of the area is also our defensive midfielder leaving us massively vulnerable if he does come up, being awful at scoring from set-pieces. It's been like that for a while. Now, what's the worst possible trait you could add to a team who does all that, but still controls games? Oh aye - being terrible at defending set-pieces. Now there's that as well. There's a lot to change there - it's not just as simple as finding another Kris Boyd and sitting back as he sticks a leg out to make it 5-0 to the Rangers.
Of course, just solving one of these problems would help. But this is getting beyond the stage where it's something that we should be taking into account of with our summer transfer plans. Something needs to be done right now, before the unthinkable happens. We're unlikely to completely sort it, but we need to at least patch it up by finding a temporary, improvised solution immediately.