Why Rangers Are Struggling On The Road

By Dougie Wright - @dougie_analysis

In the world of football, one well worn cliché holds true: home advantage. Since the beginning of last season, the average Scottish Premiership team is 10% more likely to win a game at home than they are away. For Rangers, this effect is quadrupled: at Ibrox they have a 40% higher chance of winning than they do outside of Govan. Indeed, nineteen wins and no defeats is not a record to be sniffed at.

Unfortunately for Mark Warburton, Rangers have to play half of their games away from home. To take the opposite of the above statistic, that means that Rangers are nearly twice as likely to drop points when they leave Govan.

The shooting stats back this up. At Ibrox, Rangers take an average of 18 shots a game. Away from home, it’s 11. At Ibrox, Rangers face 8 shots a game. Away from home it’s 12.

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To put that into plainer terms, Warburton’s team are 50% less efficient in both attack and defence away from home, according to shooting numbers. Why might this be?

For a start, social studies have shown that there is a clear link between support size and on field performance. There are always exceptions, but in general you’re more likely to do well with more support. Playing at Ibrox in front of a crowd of 50,000 is bound to give the Rangers players added motivation.

Secondly, Ibrox has one of the biggest pitches in the league. Lee Wallace and James Tavernier like to stick on the touchline; if a team wants to mark them then they’re going to have to take players right out to these wide areas. In turn, this creates bigger gaps in the middle of the field for Rangers to exploit. In contrast, Ross County’s Victoria Park is one of the smallest, narrowest grounds in the league, which may explain why the Rangers full backs didn’t have much joy on Sunday.

To return to another well worn football cliché, Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Ross County really was a game of two halves. Rangers managed four shots on target in the first 37 minutes, and none thereafter. On the other hand, Ross County had only managed three shots in this time, but managed another twelve from then on. By the end of the game, Ross County had attempted fifteen shots on Wes Foderingham’s goal; the only team to have managed more shots against the Gers this season was Celtic.

Indeed, while Ross County had their chances, to say they were wasteful would be an understatement. Most teams should be hitting the target one in every three shots; Ross County only managed one in five. This chance from Liam Boyce is a case in point:

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Liam Boyce is one of the best strikers in the league. In fact, Matt Rhein (@TheBackPassRule on Twitter- really cool Scottish football stats account) rated him as the best in Scotland before his injury, when the quality and quantity of chances he was taking and creating were worth around 1.2 goals a game.

In this particular instance, Boyce is totally unmarked in the central channel of the box. This is by far and away the likeliest place on the pitch that a shot will turn into a goal. However, Boyce takes it first time and a weak shot goes wide. Liam Boyce is a fantastic footballer who is destined for greater things, but this was an example of poor decision making that cost Ross County all three points.

However, it’s not like Rangers didn’t have their own chances to win the game. Just after Clint Hill had headed in his side’s opening goal, Rangers launched a counter attack:

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This is a 4 vs. 2 situation for Rangers. Furthermore, the two remaining Ross County defenders are loaded on the far side of the pitch. If Lee Wallace can draw his man, that would theoretically leave Michael O’Halloran(near side) one on one with the goalkeeper.

Alas, Wallace passed too early to Kenny Miller (wide left) who was left with two defenders to beat from a narrow angle, and shot wide as a result. Teams need to acknowledge that some shots are worth more than others, and this was one of these moments.

Finally, Rangers and set pieces. Football analyst Michael Caley did a study on corners in the English Premiership, and found that for all teams, the chance of scoring from a corner was 3%. From every 100 corners a team takes, they should expect around 3 goals.

Let’s do a quick bit of maths.

Rangers have faced 45 corners this season. That’s 3.75 corners per game. Only Aberdeen and Celtic face less. Rangers have already conceded 3 goals from corners this year. That means 7% of all corners they face result in goals; more than double what they should be conceding.

In contrast, Rangers have taken 112 corners this season. Using Caley’s 3% rule, Rangers should have scored at least three times from corners this season. However, they’ve only scored twice; a conversion rate of 1.7%.

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Without getting bogged down in the numbers, this basically means that Rangers are twice as vulnerable as they should be when facing corners, and half as effective as they should be when taking them. In the battle for second, Rangers would be well advised to perhaps re-evaluate their strategy from corners.

Analysis by Dougie Wright. For more football analysis, follow him on twitter @dougie_analysis