Ibrox View: Rock-steady Rangers ace surely did not deserve barrage of midweek criticism
Rangers ace Ryan Jack came in for a barrage of criticism from Scotland fans on Thursday night.
The midfielder, so dependable and revered at Ibrox, bore the brunt of an onslaught from disgruntled supporters of the national team during the dreary 0-0 European Championship qualifier against Israel.
Of course, Steve Clarke’s men eventually scraped through that clash on penalties, but was the widespread hounding of Jack actually justified?
For starters, it’s safe to say that this was not a premium performance from Jack.
As per Wyscout, the Gers midfielder’s average pass completion rate this season has been just over 91%.
Against Israel, it was just 80%.
But that stat only really tells half the story.
If we interrogate it further, we see that Jack played less than half of the 13.57 passes into the final third that he usually registers.
In fact, a quick look at his pass map shows a largely negative performance, with a number of sideways and backwards passes.
Of course, Jack plays conservative passes when he turns out for Rangers too, but the difference is that he gets on the ball much, much more, meaning that he also has the opportunity to play forwards with greater regularity too.
Above is a graphic showing his pass map from the 2-0 win over Ross County last weekend.
Jack played 90 passes, exactly double his tally against Israel.
But in that total, he also managed 31 pieces of forward distribution.
By contrast, he made just 12 forward passes against Israel.
It’s little wonder, therefore, that he came in for stick from watching supporters, but perhaps this wasn’t entirely Jack’s fault.
If we take a closer look at Scotland’s stats on Thursday as a whole, we see that they managed just 38.42% possession.
Similarly, Israel recorded 563 attempted passes to our 381.
In short, there were large periods of the game that Scotland failed to get themselves into – and that doesn’t suit Jack at all.
As a comparison, so far this season Rangers have averaged 58.87% possession, and have attempted over 573 passes per game.
The proof of how that affected Jack can be seen in the number of passes he received against Israel.
The Ibrox ace was found by his teammates just 24 times on Thursday.
That figure is a sharp drop from the 73 times that he received the ball on Sunday against Ross County.
It’s hardly rocket science that a player renowned for his passing is going to wilt when he can’t get on the ball, and when his team spend the overwhelming majority of the game out of possession.
Yes, it’s true that Jack didn’t cover himself in glory on Thursday, but nor did he deserve the tide of criticism that came his way either.
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