Falkirk were hammered by Celtic to leave things as they were at the bottom. We're still three points above the drop zone and now there are seven games left. We desperately need to win at least one of the games before the split. If we play like we did in the second half tonight we have a chance. If we play like we did in the first we can start planning the trips to East End park and Firhill.
What we couldn't afford to do was lose an early goal - which is what we did. After 11 minutes a nice passing move saw Sasa Papac find DaMarcus Beasley, who found Pedro Mendes, who returned it to Papac. By this time the fullback had made his way to the byline and was able to cut the ball back for Kris Boyd to score. it was a well worked move - but also extremely similar to the goal Rangers scored against Falkirk on Sunday. Do we not scout our opponents and watch for these things.
There was some light relief when the usually reliable Boyd missed an open goal after a horrendous mistake by Howard, and there was some amusement for the Rangers fans when we took a corner with the usual results. After 18 minutes, we were shown exactly how to take a corner when Mendes whipped one in and Maurice Edu headed it past Howard. Game over.
On the plus side, by this point we'd manage to injure Beasley and soon Craig Dargo got Papac - although if they'd done it earlier we might not have been two down! Papac's absence temporarily gave us an extra man and we almost made it pay when Jack Ross was given the necessary space to produce a deep cross that Stephen McGinn fired back in and it somehow found its way to Neil Alexander's hands with the help of a Rangers player who knew nothing about it.
This gave us a boost, although why John Potter thought his volley from the edge of the box would go anywhere other than the stand is a mystery. There were a couple more chances for Rangers before half time, but a Boyd header was well saved by Howard before Mendes shot wide.
Dargo had a half decent effort at the start of the second half when he shot tamely at Alexander, before Boyd beat the offside trap only for Howard to save his shot. Then a lifeline. Dargo slipped the ball through for Dorman, making a trademark run, and he somehow managed to squeeze a shot past Alexander from a tight angle.
This should have been the catalyst for us to go and take something from the game, but it didn't happen. Sure, we had possession and we pressed, but we failed to make it count. It's hard to think of a decent chance Alexander had to deal with, while our set pieces were up to their usual standards. Instead, Rangers went closest to scoring when Nacho Novo saw a shot saved by Howard.
The first half performance was awful, the second half was good - but we created very little. We simply must improve and play for a whole game against Hibs and Motherwell and take at least four points to set us up for the split.