26/12/2024 – RANGERS (H)

Merry Christmas!

Winning against any club always gives us at Consilium immense happiness, but beating certain teams always adds to enjoyment and there is little doubt (in our humble opinion) that the victory on Boxing Day was more enjoyable to our support than the average win.

Boxing Day, is of course St. Stephen’s Day in Ireland, and in a script Oscar Wilde couldn’t have written any better, Stephen Robison led the side to victory with the goals coming from two Irish players.

Before a ball was kicked, in our pre-match briefing, there was confidence in the Consilium ranks that we could win, and this was based purely on our form without even considering the opposition.

People in the media will want to make us believe that Saints victory was only possible due to Rangers not playing well, but we are a good team, and we had momentum. It would have taken a very good side to have walked away with 3 points from Paisley on Boxing Day.

The financial gap also has to be considered, particularly as the media love to use it as an excuse when certain clubs are up against it in Europe, but then conveniently forget about every week, when it is in these clubs favour.

Someone much cleverer than us at Consilium looked into last night, and Rangers wage bill is around 15 times larger than ours:

It is of course, not a shock. What is doesn’t show however, is that we have Gogic and Taylor at the back, Phillips in midfield and Olusanya up front. Rangers didn’t have that. We can thank our extraordinary manager for this level of recruitment and coaching.

Saints were undoubtedly the better side in the first half, a fact admitted even by the Rangers manager, and the high press had the Ibrox side in all sorts of problems with mistakes from their players commonplace.

When Jack Butland rushed from his goal and flattened Greg Kiltie in the penalty box after half an hour, a result of the panic that had developed in the Rangers ranks, there was only one outcome. Although after the last few weekends, the only surprising thing was the referee made the decision and didn’t need to rely on VAR.

Oisin Smyth converted the penalty with ease, continuing his remarkable renaissance over the past 5 days. The biggest compliment we can pay Oisin is that we have not missed injured captain Mark O’Hara, who had been outstanding for the last few months.

Rangers came out fighting in the second half though, and scored a scrappy equaliser after an hour, but that was as good as it would get for the Glasgow side. This 15 minute period just after half time was the only dominance they enjoyed during the game.

This equaliser led to a quick tactical tweak from Robinson, with the main objective being to stop Rangers advances down the flanks, and some crucial substitutes were also introduced.

Alex Iacoviiti and Jonah Ayunga were first on immediately after this goal, followed by Caolan Boyd-Munce around 10 minutes later, with the shape of the team changing to 5-3-2.

Saints almost retook the lead when a Iacovitti header hit the bar from a Smyth corner with 10 minutes left, but Robinson then flung on 17 year old Callum Penman for his debut, along with the hero of McDiarmid Park, Evan Mooney in a bold attempt to win the match.

The fact that nobody was worried about these two kids being able to handle an in the balance match live on TV, tells you everything about the standard of our academy, and they are a credit to themselves and the club.

Two minutes into the six added on, the winner came when three of five Saints substitutes combined to score one of the finest and most celebrated goals since the current stadium opened in 2009.

Ayunga executed a magnificent slide tackle on a Rangers player around 40 yards out and advanced down our left hand side. Multiple opposition players went to close him down, but the forward simply took them all out at once by crossing for Mooney, who had only opposition player in his vicinity.

The youngster got the ball under control, and instead of attempting to fashion a chance for himself (as most of the stadium were urging him to do) he calmy had the composure to lay it back for Boyd-Munce who was galloping up-field in support.

Sounds simple, but the weight of the pass was perfect and intentionally teed up on the Irishman’s preferred left side, and without needing to break stride, Caolan hammered a shot from 25 yards low into the corner of the net, like a thunderbolt sent from the gods of football.

No keeper in the history of the sport could have saved the effort, and Saints had won their third match in row, late in the game each time, to complete a perfect Christmas.

For Boyd-Munce and Smyth, it must have been a sweet night as both had been out of the team for months and waited patiently for the chance to show the manager what we have been missing. This couldn’t have been easy for either of them, so it is wonderful to see our players grab their chances like this.

This victory leaves Saints in 5th position, we may have doubted it in the autumn when we had a wobble, but the chase for European football is most definitly ON!

COYS!

Rangers Players of the Match:

5 points – Oisin Smyth

3 points – Killian Phillips

1 point – Alex Gogic

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