Kris Commons has warned James Tavernier that his days at Ibrox are numbered. After last week’s programme notes for the visit of Hamilton that news will probably come as a relief to the former Gateshead starlet.
On the back of getting knocked out of the Scottish Cup by Hearts Tav confirmed what most folk in Scottish football suspected- Steven Gerrard’s squad can’t cope when they are put under pressure.
Since the turn of the year Celtic have extended their lead at the top of the table by 11 points despite a daunting run of away fixtures at Aberdeen, Motherwell and Livingston.
In contrast Tav’s away days have been confined to bottom six clubs but incredibly points have been shipped at Hearts, Kilmarnock and St Johnstone with the Scottish Cup trail ending at Tynecastle.
These comments are in the match programme tonight from Rangers Captain James Tavernier. No wonder we’re the mess we are. If the badge on the chest is too heavy you have no place at our club. pic.twitter.com/RU7l9hWsJ9
— BMC Rangers Rants (@BMCRangersRants) March 4, 2020
In sport it is fatal to show or admit to any weakness, being successful involves overcoming adversity which is essential for a footballer wanting to survive in Glasgow.
The Sun reports:
Writing in his Daily Mail column, Commons said: “For James Tavernier to come out last week and basically admit that Rangers are bottle merchants was a staggering error of judgment on so many levels.
“Firstly, it provided concrete proof that the club’s PR department is a shambles. Who on earth thought it was okay for those comments to go into a matchday programme?
“No wonder Tavernier was getting pelters from the fans. I guarantee you Steven Gerrard would have been raging at how it was handled. But the real error in judgment has to be the decision to make Tavernier the captain in the first place. He’s not a leader.
“He makes far too many mistakes and it looks to me like he could now be on his way out of the club in the summer. For the skipper to say something like that publicly just makes the whole club look weak and it’s symptomatic of why Rangers have buckled under the pressure.
“There’s no winning mentality at the club. Never in a month of Sundays would Scott Brown come out and say something like that. If anyone else at Celtic spoke like that in public, he would come down on them like a ton of bricks.
“For Tavernier to be swanning around in a Lamborghini just makes it all look worse. He can’t handle the heat, yet he’s driving around in the Batmobile as if he’s some kind of big shot. A parting of the ways now looks inevitable.”
Tav suffered a leg knock in the defeat from Hamilton, missing yesterday’s 1-0 win away to Ross County where Connor Goldson wore the armband.
