Ibrox View: Stats suggest having less possession could be better for Rangers v Aberdeen
Rangers will know better than anybody that they need to hit the ground running when they face Aberdeen next weekend.
The last thing that the Gers can afford is to give Celtic an advantage in the title race from the very first day of the season.
But there are certainly reasons to be optimistic going into the new campaign.
For one thing, the Gers looked really good in their recent friendlies over in France.
Two consecutive wins over OGC Nice and Olympique Lyon, wracking up an aggregate of 4-0.
And there are surely things that the Gers can employ from those victories going into the new season.
Steven Gerrard’s men actually had a lower xG in both of those matches than their average per game over the past calendar year, as per Wyscout.
Despite that, they still managed to record 0.04 goals per game more than their annual average.
Clearly then, these were more efficient Rangers performances.
This was reflected in a combined shot accuracy that was 23.7% higher than the Gers’ current average.
Perhaps most interesting, however, is that fact that Gerrard’s men did so well in front of goal while having considerably less possession.
Over the past year, Rangers have averaged 59.46% possession – nearly 20% more than their opponents.
In these instances, however, they had just 41.3% and 36.96% in each of the two games.
In fact, if you extrapolate those numbers to their logical conclusion, you could even argue that the Gers actually performed better without the pressure of having to control the tempo and direction of a match.
We saw a similar thing in the win at Parkhead back in December, when we won despite having just 41.53%
Obviously, we’re not saying that we should be sitting back an absorbing pressure from every side in Scotland, but certainly against some of the bigger teams – and perhaps Aberdeen fall into that category – there would appear to be some merit to letting the opponent have the ball a little more than we might usually.
In other Rangers news, Ibrox View: Solid display proves that Mayo deserves chance to replace injured defensive colleague Nikola Katic.