Rangers well and truly shot themselves in the foot after throwing away a position of dominance to be beaten by a Sheffield Wednesday side that was chronically short of confidence coming into the game. After battering them for forty minutes quick goals either side of the break knocked the stuffing out of a Rangers side that just can’t seem to kill off games they should win at a canter. 

There were a couple of changes to the side that had battled to a draw in the awful game at Coventry on Wednesday night. Camp was in goal behind a back four of Mancienne, Stewart, Connolly and Delaney. Buzsaky, Rowlands, Leigertwood and Vine were in midfield with Blackstock and Agyemang up front. Mahon returned to the bench but the fragile Hall was nowhere to be seen and in the second half he would be badly missed. 

From the off it was pretty clear that the home side were struggling to create chances of late. It wasn’t a massive surprise to be honest with a player like Enoch Showunmi up front who has never impressed me any time I have seen him. Tudgay next to him was more of a threat but he was fighting a one man battle. The former did fire over the top early on but then Rangers grabbed hold of the game and it was almost one way traffic for much of the half. 

Rangers won a free kick on the right edge of the box after Blackstock had been bundled over by Beevers. As everyone set up for a cross, Vine pulled away and Buzsaky picked him out only to see him smash it high over the bar. It was well worked but unfortunately typical of Vine’s finishing and a good example for why he should play wide more often than not. 

The R’s central duo of Rowlands and Leigertwood were totally dominating Kavanagh and Wallwork and as a result the Hillsborough crowd were already starting to get a bit twitchy. Kavanagh in particular seemed to be surrendering possession every time he touched the ball in the first half, unfortunately for Rangers he would raise his game considerably later in the match. 

With fifteen minutes gone Rangers took the lead with a sweeping attack. Another ball won in the middle of the park was sprayed wide to Vine and he went at full back Hinds. As he beat his man he spotted Delaney charging up in support and he fed the ball into the path of the left backs run. Delaney showed a cool head as he opened his body out and slotted a fine right footed finish past Lee Grant. You don’t see many goals from open play from your full backs but the amount of attacking runs Delaney makes means he stands a better chance than most. 

Rangers were steaming forward now and a sublime through ball from Rowlands picked out Blackstock who had drifted between Hinds and Wood into a yawning gap. The striker made the right decision by taking his shot early to catch Grant out but he wasn’t able to find the target. Blackstock had looked much brighter than he had in many of his recent cameos from the bench and perhaps this was a sign that he was starting to find some of his form from last season? 

Rangers should have been two goals up shortly after as another rampaging run from Delaney ended up with a ball being fed into the feet of Agyemang on the edge of the box. The big striker needed one touch and a shot but instead he had a poor touch, had to do a pirouette to get it out of his feet and then, credit to him, he managed to get a shot away that beat Grant but came back off the foot of the post. To my reckoning this was just about the first, and only, shot that Agyemang has managed in his five goalless games.  

Vine missed another excellent opportunity as half time approached when he went past Hinds for the umpteenth time and cut across the edge of the area. You could see what he was thinking as he unleashed a bending shot that dipped over the angle of post and bar with Grant grateful it had missed the target. Buzsaky tried his luck shortly afterwards with a wind assisted blast at a free kick but his shot faded well wide. 

The atmosphere at Hillsborough had turned from mumbling disquiet to outright dissent now as the home fans booed their players. Brian Laws had seen enough and took action five minutes before half time. Wallwork, who had been totally dominated and Showunmi, who had been total rubbish, were replaced by Sean McAllister and Deon Burton and the impact was marked. 

All of a sudden The Owls had someone up front who knew how to get in front of a centre half and hold up play, despite the fact that Burton must be half the size of Showunmi. Balls that Connolly and Stewart were winning with ease were now being contested. The change also seemed to fire up the other players, having seen two of their team mates dragged off before the break they knew that they had to start playing or they probably wouldn’t last much longer. 

Wednesday immediately forced a couple of corners and then, in injury time, they scored an excellent equaliser. Franck Songo’o, who had done precisely nothing so far, picked up the ball about forty yards from goal and flighted a great ball over the back four. Kavanagh was running from deep and he wasn’t tracked or picked up and he arrived on cue to float a delicate header over the helpless Camp. If you aren’t going to track the runner someone should at least make an effort to try and block his run if nobody has gone with him.  

So the scores were level at the break and on the balance of play it was a total injustice. Rangers only had themselves to blame though, forty minutes of almost total dominance had yielded just one goal where as Wednesday had played for five for the same reward.  

Rangers created the first real chance of the second half when Vine breezed past Hinds yet again and cut the ball back to Blackstock. He got a fierce snap shot away but Grant did well to get his hands up in time to beat the ball to safety. It was a good reaction save as Blackstock can’t have been more than ten yards away and made a solid connection. 

Had that gone in it might have killed off the Wednesday revival but as it was they found themselves ahead seven minutes into the half. A long punt up field was attacked and missed by Stewart and caused Connolly and Camp a problem. Connolly may have wanted to knock it back but Camp was already haring off his line and that option was no longer on. McAllister managed to nip in to toe the ball away and Camp clattered into him for a blatant pen. Burton stepped up and sent Camp the wrong way from the spot. The home side were now winning a game they had been playing in for little more than twelve minutes. 

The midfield dominance that Rangers had enjoyed in the first half had totally evaporated by now as Rowlands and Leigertwood found themselves dominated by a veteran in Kavanagh and a kid in McAllister. Kavanagh should have done better when the increasingly home oriented referee Swarbrick awarded a free kick twenty five yards out. He tried to curl it over the wall but his shot didn’t come back nearly enough and ended up well wide. 

In an effort to regain some territory Ephraim and Mahon were sent on for Vine and Leigertwood. Vine lost his rag when he came off and it was hardly a surprise. He had been our brightest attacking player and Agyemang up top was turning in a display that wouldn’t get him picked in the Dog & Shit second XI. Ephraim’s first act after coming on was to be scythed down from behind by Kavanagh. Many a ref would have sent him off but this didn’t even merit a booking, despite Stewart going into the book minutes earlier for a challenge that he mistimed by a nanosecond.  

Rangers’ attacks were few and far between now. In a rare foray into the Wednesday area Blackstock almost scored again with another good effort. This time it was Delaney that breezed past the static Hinds and his fierce cross was brilliantly headed on target by Blackstock only for Grant to save well once again. 

Balanta was sent on in place of the ineffective Buzsaky but he barely got into the game. At the other end Kavanagh was denied by a superb save from Camp after he fired in a tremendous curling effort that seemed top corner bound. Things all started to get a bit daft though as the game entered injury time. 

Songo’o, much improved in the second half, tried to keep the ball down in the corner only for Ephraim to take umbrage with this and clatter into him. The challenge was a poor one and with the home side baying for blood it was little surprise that referee Swarbrick obliged with the red card. He indicated an elbow had been used, which replays suggest it wasn’t, but you can’t get away with barging someone like that in this day and age (unless you are Sylvain Distin of course). From the resulting free kick Songo’o tried the Maradona rainbow flick and Swarbrick quickly called a halt to proceedings as Rangers players piled in threatening to lynch the Frenchman. It was a shame they hadn’t shown the same amount of fight during the second half, perhaps some inappropriate ball juggling earlier in the piece might have got them going. 

This was a poor result for Rangers and despite the poor officiating; the blame has to lie squarely at the feet of the players. They should have buried a desperately poor Wednesday side by half time but again, they let them off the hook and once they conceded a goal they stopped doing everything that had gotten them into a dominant position in the first place. Its not the first time this has happened this season, Burnley at home springs to mind immediately, but I hope it will be the last. 

If we had managed to wrap up the three points it would have put a twelve point gap between us and Wednesday in 22^nd place. As it is the gap is down to six and the upcoming home games against Blackpool and Scunthorpe now have to yield six points. Changes also need to be made to the side. We will be without Ephraim and Agyemang surely cannot be allowed to continue to play with his form being worse than anything Nygaard ever served up in his time at the club. Hall also needs to come back in for Stewart as the back four just doesn’t look the same without his organisational skills.  

Man of the Match – Matthew Connolly. The former Arsenal man was defending for two for much of the second half as Stewart went AWOL. He looks like a top prospect for the future.