George Overhill

Mon 7 November 2022 19:10, UK

Giovanni van Bronckhorst feels like a dead man walking at Rangers after what John Lundstram did in the shock defeat at St. Johnstone on Sunday.

The result alone, on top of an historically bad Champions League campaign, and another significant deficit at the top of the table which included a horrific thrashing at Celtic Park, is arguably enough to reach that conclusion.

But seeing the Merseyside midfield man at McDiarmid Park at the weekend looks damning for the manager.

Not only was the former Sheffield United man wandering aimlessly just outside his penalty area in the build up for the hosts’ first, but the sequence just before that which saw him lose possession by overrunning the ball is even worse.

Lundstram carried the ball into the opposition half, took a heavy touch and then just gave up on the 50-50 with Adam Montgomery out of frustration.

Football Scotland deputy editor Mark Hendry commented on footage of the clip on Twitter, saying: “If you did this at fives – and I have many times – you’d get a hammering.

“Really poor from Lundstram who you’d expect would’ve thrown himself into that 50/50.”

It was poor, and is an illuminating sign for the manager’s combative midfield general appears to be at such a low ebb.

It doesn’t reflect fantastically on Lundstram himself, but the 28-year-old went close to scoring more than once, including a thunderbolt off the crossbar late on, so he hasn’t fully checked out.

But it is illustrative of how poor the mood appears to be for this side, having been battered six times in Europe and now with their own fans turning on them as the season threatens to fall apart.

That van Bronckhorst was standing on the sidelines of this defeat shaking his head and looking lost, after publicly admitting that Rangers had no chance to compete at the top table on the continent cannot have helped.

And while the manager has also been put in a difficult position by the board, which it is now clear did not strengthen adequately in the transfer market, and is being evasive about the money that should be available, he doesn’t look like he has an answer.

For all the good times on the way to the Europa League final last season, and the Scottish Cup win, once a club has found themselves in such a miserable situation it is rare that the incumbent leader can lift them out.

You can’t legislate for James Brown hammering in his first ever goal from 30 yards, but you can motivate a team to compete, and van Bronckhorst seems to have done the opposite on recent weeks.

Lundstram is supposed to epitomise the fight in this Rangers side at his best, so to see him look anything but in that first-half sequence on Sunday is an alarming indicator of how low things have fallen.

The Dutchman’s ability as a tactician almost becomes a secondary question in such a predicament, and it seems inevitable now that someone else will be tasked with the revival.

In other Rangers news, Michael Beale breaks his silence over his shock Ibrox return as the manager’s job hangs by a thread.