BARRY FERGUSON last night slammed Rangers for letting bad habits creep back in against Dundee.
Stand-in Gers boss Fergie was stunned with what he saw as Tony Docherty’s side strode into a 2-1 half-time lead.
Barry Ferguson was delighted to beat Dundee but slammed his players for their performance in the 4-3 victory[/caption]
The interim boss saw his side fall behind 2-0 and 3-1 before eventually sealing the comeback win[/caption]
He praised his players’ character but insisted they can’t keep coming from behind[/caption]
But Ferguson admits the stunning comeback which saw James Tavernier, Tom Lawrence and Cyriel Dessers score late on to win 4-3 wouldn’t have happened before he took over.
Fergie snapped: “It’s a brilliant three points but overall, certainly the first half, we were miles off it.
“You can see in my face it’s frustration, I saw so many old, bad habits come in.
“I had to make a couple of changes at half-time, I had to change the shape of the team from a three to a four to try to kick-start us basically.
“Second half was more like it but we were giving too many opportunities and easy goals away.
“We were sloppy at times.
“I said to them after it, there’s a lot of work needs to happen this week.
“We need to sit down, go through things and work hard on the training ground because there were a lot of things I didn’t like.
“But one thing about my players is they never give in.
“This has been labelled at them for a long time now but I think five or six weeks ago, Rangers come away with nothing.
“The Rangers team I have got just now, my players, that’s the side I’ve drilled into them.
“But we need to do a lot better with other things within the game, in terms of how we approach it from the start.
“I warned them what it would be like coming here, but we gave Dundee a goal of a start.
“We were sloppy, off it.
“Obviously we got the goal back, in at half-time and a few choice words were said.”
Ferguson whipped off Connor Barron and Leon Balogun at half-time, throwing on Ianis Hagi and Bailey Rice in a bid to spark his team up.
And he insists he will never shirk from making big calls.
He said: “I had to make some tough decisions but I’m not scared to make tough decisions.
“I’ve said that and they know that.
“Overall, a brilliant three points but there’s a lot of work to be done still.”
When Scott Tiffoney put Dundee 3-1 up it looked like the game was over for Rangers, but three goals in the space of 18 minutes turned the night on its head.
And while Ferguson was disappointed with the quality of football on show, he DOES believe this Ibrox squad have the character needed.
He said: “I’m building good characters just now, but we need to be a lot better within the game.
“I’m just frustrated because I saw so many old habits creeping back I and I can’t allow that.
“I told them I won’t accept that.
“But as a group of players they understand that and know certain the first half was not what I expect.
“They shouldn’t expect it either.
“We will get back to work on Monday morning and make sure these habits don’t creep back in.”
Tony Docherty insists Dundee have to face up to blowing a 3-1 lead against Rangers.
He said: “There’s no feeling sorry for ourselves, there are things we need to accept responsibility for.
“There are a lot of things we are doing right but there are things we are doing wrong and that’s why we’re in the position we are in.
“It speaks volumes when we are the third highest scorers in the league but the concession of goals is why we are in the position we’re in.
“We need to address that.
“We should be in the position where three goals are enough to win a football match.
“So the overriding emotion is huge disappointment, I can’t focus on anything but the fact we’ve lost a game we should never lose.
“The expected goals for us was 2.8, Rangers was 2.4 and we had numerous chances.
“It tells its own story that we are third in the league for goals scored but bottom of the league for goals conceded.
“At 3-3 Simon Murray goes through and I think he’s scored the winner, then we’re picking the ball out of our own net and losing 4-3.
“It’s really hard to take, three goals should be enough to win a game.
“At half-time Rangers changed to 4-3-3 and we then changed shape.
“With that we contained Rangers and hit them on the break, that’s where our third goal comes from.
“We were doing that well but I felt we went a little bit deep.
“We didn’t get out to the ball quickly enough on goals two and three, we should get more pressure on the ball.
“The two goals come from 25 yards and there should be bodies there to stop that.
“Then the fourth is a sickener.”
Despite the disappointment Doc is convinced Dundee can pull away from the relegation play-off place.
He said: “If we keep that consistency of performance but we work harder to stop conceding goals, we’ll be OK.
“Since the Motherwell game there has been a decent level and we keep doing that in the games remaining we’ll be OK.
“We could have scored more today when you look at the chances.
“The gameplan was to make sure we were in a position to absorb pressure and hit them on transition.
“We did create chances.”
Docherty had to take Simon Murray off towards the end and hopes the striker hasn’t picked up a knock.
Asked if the 19-goal striker was crocked, he said: “I’m not sure, I haven’t spoken to the medics yet.
“Before he went through he was struggling a bit and we were contemplating putting Charlie Reilly on.
“But when he goes through Simon being Simon he bursts himself to try to get the winner.
“Hopefully there’s no damage.”
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