Ibrox View: Rangers cannot afford to repeat wasteful 19/20 display v Hamilton
Rangers have the opportunity to extend their unbeaten start to the Scottish Premiership season when they face Hamilton on Saturday afternoon.
But the last time the two sides met, things could hardly have gone worse for the Gers.
Steven Gerrard’s men were sunk 1-0 in a shock defeat back in March – a result which effectively ended their legitimacy as realistic title challengers.
On paper, Rangers dominated that match.
As well as having 73.31% possession, they registered a massive 31 attempts to the Accies’ nine, as per Wyscout.
In fact, as pictured below, Rangers never saw their average possession drop below 65% in that game, such was their constant control of proceedings.
One glaring stat really showed where they fell short, however.
Despite having 31 attempts on goal, their shot accuracy was just 29.03%.
Compare that to Hamilton, whose accuracy was 44.44%.
In more immediate terms, that led to an xG of 3.5 for Gerrard’s men.
Steven Davis’ injury time miss alone, as pictured below, had an xG of 0.48, meaning that you would expect him to finish his effort roughly half of the time.
And really, that was the hallmark of Rangers’ downfall.
Incredibly, the Gers have only registered a higher xG on two occasions in 2020 – once against Stranraer, and once in a Scottish Cup tie against the Accies.
To create all those chances but not put one away is, quite honestly, a travesty.
By contrast, Hamilton had an xG of just 0.59
Obviously, everybody has a bad day at the office now and again.
Football is an unpredictable game that doesn’t always follow the rules of rhyme or reason, and that means that anomalies like this are bound to come up from time to time.
But even taking that into account, one thing is absolutely for certain – Rangers simply cannot afford to be this wasteful when the two sides clash again on Saturday.
In other Rangers news, Alex Bruce has hailed this player’s start to the season.