Analysis Corner: How Motherwell suffocated Rangers

By Dougie Wright (@dougie_wright)

Sunday afternoon saw underdogs Motherwell record a 2-0 win over Pedro’s Caixinha’s Rangers side. The Portuguese now only has a 57% win ratio this season, while Stephen Robinson’s ‘Well have now won six of their last eight games, and look forward to a November cup final against Celtic.

Let’s see how the game panned out.

Motherwell’s Tactics

Motherwell’s tactics were fairly simple, yet effective.

The defenders and goalkeeper would always play a ball long and high into the space between Fabio Cardoso and James Tavernier on Rangers’ right hand side. Ryan Bowman was usually the intended recipient.

This had two clear benefits: it made sure that Rangers couldn’t win the ball back in the Motherwell half, and it kept James Tavernier from progressing up the pitch.

Once the ball had been played up the park, the Motherwell midfield would rush to the general area of the ball. If Bowman won the ball cleanly, the midfielders were nearby to pick up the layoff. If the ball fell to a Rangers player nearby, he suddenly had the immediate attention of two or three Motherwell players.

Motherwell basically wanted the ball in their half for as little time as possible.

However, when Rangers did attack (down the wings as usual), Motherwell’s defensive system usually took care of business. Here’s how they lined up:

Whichever side Rangers broke on, the nearest of the Motherwell central three would go and meet the ball carrier, while the winger on the far side would drop back to join the centre backs. So if Rangers broke on Motherwell’s right, Kipré would go out to challenge, while Tait would drop in from the left wing.

This meant that Motherwell always had three guys in the centre to meet any Rangers cross.

Rangers’ Response

Anyone who’s watched Rangers this season knows that their game plan revolves around getting the ball wide and crossing from near the opponent’s box. Indeed, only Motherwell have played more crosses than Rangers this season.

This tactic did actually create a good few chances for them on Sunday, as this shot map shows:

However, Motherwell were defending deep in numbers, allowing them to put a lot of pressure on the shooter in the vast majority of cases. Yet, good opportunities were spurned by Carlos Peña, Josh Windass, Declan John and Alfredo Morelos. Rangers certainly had their chances.

Worrying for Rangers fans will be the response to Caixinha being sent off. With the team 1-0 down in a semi-final and 25 minutes left to play, you would expect some sort of reaction.

In the 10 minutes between Caixinha’s sending off and Moult’s second, his side could only muster 10 forward passes.

Even worse, after Louis Moult’s second, Rangers only managed one shot: a half-hearted header from Alfredo Morelos with five minutes left to play.

When a team like Motherwell want to play a physical game based on long balls and flick ons, you have to keep calm. Their midfield want to press the second ball while their defenders sit deep? Fine, but that’s going to open up a lot of space in behind the midfield.

The problem for Rangers is Graham Dorrans and Ryan Jack both sit pretty deep themselves. Centrally, this creates a huge gap between themselves and the forward duo of Peña and Morelos. This explains why Rangers couldn’t take advantage of the space Motherwell were leaving between their defence and midfield: nobody was there.

The response to this should have been to either bring one of the wingers more central, or to sacrifice a forward for an extra central midfielder. Bringing on 5’7” winger Aaron Nemane just did not make sense.

This strategy was worsened further by the Ibrox’s side switch to the long ball after going two goals down. Of the Rangers midfield and attack, only Eduardo Herrera stood above 6 foot (and even then, he’s not renowned for being particularly good in the air). The whole reason Motherwell used their tactic because they knew they were physically stronger than Rangers; Rangers attempting to copy their strategy played right into their hands.

Where do the two sides go from here?

Motherwell have now beaten Aberdeen and Rangers in this competition. It seems likely that they’ll stick with similar tactics to Sunday for the cup final - it will be interesting to see how differently Celtic handle the aerial assault in comparison to their city rivals.

As for Rangers, it’s yet another loss in a “pressure game” for Caixinha. There’s only so many times you can call a performance “unacceptable” before your ability to properly prepare the players comes into question. As outlined above, there are clear tactical problems with this system. However, the mental side of the game also plays a huge part. Do this group of players have the mentality to cope with life at Rangers? The jury’s very much out.

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