Kris Boyd went into meltdown today as he watched Steven Gerrard’s side draw 2-2 away to St Johnstone.
Nikola Katic was the main target for the Sky Sports punter-less than two months after he was the hero of the Glasgow derby prompting Boyd to declare the title race as Men Against Boys.
After seven minute a bizarre high clearance from Katic presented Callum Hendry with an opportunity that he smashed past Allan McGregor to open the scoring.
All seemed happy and glorious when Flo Kamberi and Joe Ariba put the visitors in front but with 10 minutes left to play Katic failed to clear a corner with Stevie May equalising.
Boyd can almost always be relied on to put a gloss on any Ibrox performance but knowing that Celtic were on their way to a 12 point lead he couldn’t hold back his anger.
Singling out individuals for criticism is a rarity in former Ibrox players but after todays match Boyd didn’t miss as he slaughtered Katic live on air.
Covering his post match meltdown on Sky Sports the Daily Record reported:
I could stand here until the cows come home tonight and I won’t change my mind – it was the worst 90 minutes I’ve seen from a Rangers centre-half. That I can remember anyway. The first three clips here (of Katic mistakes) are before the goal – the goal went in in the eighth minute!
Steven Gerrard sent George Edmundson out to warm up after 10 minutes. Its schoolboy defending. If that was once today that that happened, you could say he was unfortunate there.
If that was once today that that happened, you could say he was unfortunate there. It was three or four times from Nikola Katic today, if he was heading up in the air, if he was kicking it up in the air.
For me, personally, I struggle to find a worse 90 minutes from a Rangers centre-half, I’m sorry. I just thought from start to finish, it wasn’t good enough. I’ve never seen it in Nikola Katic from the start.
I had a little period where I thought to myself ‘You’re doing the basics, as a defender, just clear your lines and you can be effective’. But today, not just today, since the break to be honest, the bad habits have been creeping back into his game and that would be a worry that you have had criticism from the mistakes before and you’ve not learned from them and you continue to make them.
Now I hear Edmundson should be playing, well, Steven Gerrard picks Nikola Katic ahead of him and that doesn’t say much for him (Edmundson) either.
For me, Steven Gerrard and Rangers as a football club have got a massive, massive job to rebuild that defence because I’m sorry it’s not good enough. We praise Rangers going forward, and rightly so, but defensively it was all over the place.
Gerrard has to lift his side for Wednesday’s Europa League tie against Sporting Braga followed by a Scottish Cup tie on Saturday away to Hearts.
