James Tavernier has told his new team-mates that losing at Kilmarnock is unacceptable by his club’s standards.
If Dessers, Lammers or anyone else cares to Google search the guy with the armband they’ll see that he has won two trophies in eight seasons- an achievement that earned him a Hall of Fame place earlier this year.
When the going gets tough you can count on Tav to sprint half the width of the pitch to snatch a throw-in away from John Lundstram.
And when the final whistle goes and media duties are required the former Wigan ace can be counted on to stumble through the cliches to explain away another big loss to the disgruntled bears.
After club media duties and an interview with SkySports at Kilmarnock, Tavernier was put in front of the other media partners yesterday to big up Wednesday’s match against Servette, telling Football Scotland:
It’s disappointing not to get a result and the three points that we all wanted. But it’s the first game of the season and we’ve got a very important game round the corner on Wednesday which is the perfect way to answer our performance and rectify what we need to do.
It’s about moving forward and making sure this doesn’t happen again. It’s going to be a different game. It’s at home to a European team and European teams play differently to teams in our league.
But I know as a team what we’ve worked on during pre-season and the boys will answer straight back. We’ll be looking forward to it.
Obviously Saturday really hurt – and it should. But we can’t dwell on it too much and we have to move forward.
It’s unacceptable for our standards as a team and the football club that we play for.
We were comfortable throughout the game but against a team like Kilmarnock, if the scoreline is 0-0 they are waiting for that set-piece chance and we didn’t defend well enough for that throw-in.
Hope everyone enjoys my brand new rangers comp
Tavernier x Disappointed pic.twitter.com/mR7axeMCjh
— William (@willytownsly) August 5, 2023
They went 1-0 up and it was disappointing we didn’t create the chances we could have been clinical on. It’s a first game for a lot of the new boys. They’ll learn quickly how this league works and how teams set up against us. We’ve just got to learn from it. We’ll only get stronger for having had this experience
European teams tend to be better than SPFL opponents, they also come with European referees who won’t be affiliated to the Lanarkshire Referee Association or dependent on Crawford Allan for a highly lucrative second item.
Saturday’s match was the 56th SPFL game that Tav’s side got through without conceding a penalty, last season in 10 European ties they had four penalties awarded against them on route to a place in the Champions League record books.
Pulling rank at a shy , Loser pic.twitter.com/e5qzLE6LRp
— (C)🐻🇬🇧 (@Barca__72) August 5, 2023
I know there are differing opinions but I think history will be kind to this call. If you go by data – consistently best player in Scotland over last five years. If you take a more traditional view look at the goals from RB. Top scorer in EL. Captain of the 55 team. Strong case. https://t.co/q4MlI0SG07
— Jonny McFarlane (@jonnyrmcfarlane) February 20, 2023
