FRAN --------------- Rangers Report Chronicling all of the News for Glasgow Rangers Football Club The Big Three: a preview of Rangers vs. Queen of the South Posted on August 28, 2014 by Rangers Report This season Rangers Report will run a series of Match Previews entitled, the Big Three, prior to each match. Rather then write in generalities about teams I rarely see – we will ask people who follow the opponent on a daily basis to provide some insight on their club. Their task is to identify a Big Three — three aspects of their club that Rangers supporters should keep an eye on. written by – Stuart McLaren who covers Queen of the South for The Only Team in the Bible Queen of the South: The Big Three 1. Queen of The South are the biggest side never to have played in the SPL! Queens have not been in the top flight of Scottish football since 1964. You’ll realise that this means we have never played in the SPL! In my opinion, that makes us the biggest side not to have played at that level. Since being promoted to the First Division in 2002, we have spent 11 of the 12 seasons since playing at the second level of Scottish Football, a run broken only by one season back in the second division when we were relegated due to financial problems only to storm straight back up with a record breaking points total (ring any bells with anyone?). In that time we have seen the likes of St. Mirren, St. Johnston, Inverness, Ross County, Dundee, Hamilton and Partick Thistle, all of whom we have regularly finished above in the First Division, move up to the SPL, while we have stayed were we are. Dumfries may only have a population of about 40,000, but (if you discount Annan!) we must be the closest senior side to well over 100,000 people, which, while we may never be able to challenge the big city clubs, is quite a big potential fan base by Scottish Football standards. Last season, we were the third best supported side in the First Division. Our best chance of making the SPL probably came in 2008/2009 when we managed to keep the majority of the squad which took us to the Scottish Cup Final the season before, only to lose narrowly to the beaten Eufa Cup Finalists, but a disastrous second half to the season almost saw us relegated, and the chance was gone. After successfully consolidating last season, it looked like we had a decent chance again this season. Only Falkirk finished above us, and usually the team coming down from the SPL struggle due to the loss of finances, and the team coming up needs time to consolidate. Typical of our luck, but I’m not giving up hope yet! 2. Settled Squad Queens have managed to hang on to the majority of the squad which won the second division title with a record number of points AND WON THE CHALLENGE CUP, something no other team has ever managed!!!!! In fact, the only players to have left from that squad are midfielder Derek Young, who is now with Forfar Athletic, along with goalkeeper Lee Robinson & record goal scorer Nicky Clark, both of whom have ended up at Ibrox. We struggled to replace Lee Robinson – the young guy we signed to replace him, although a decent enough keeper, couldn’t cope with crosses at First Division level, and we struggled until we got in Zander Clark, now in his second season on loan from St. Johnstone. Believe me, those of you who were at Palmerston for last season’s Challenge Cup match, you would not have won so easily had Zander been in goal that night! Mark Durnan, in the centre of our defence, is another young player from St. Johnstone, in his case signed permanently, & swept the board at the end of season player of the year awards. Young Player of the Year was local lad, Kevin Holt, who has established himself at left back. We are very strong in midfield, although we do have injury problems at the moment, we will still be able to put out at decent midfield, with local youngsters Danny Carmichael, Iain (Lovejoy) McShane, and the not so young but equally unpredictable Iain Russell all likely to feature. Up front new signing John Baird is struggling to break up the established strike force of the experienced Derek Lyle & another local youngster, Gavin Reilly. The biggest loss from our record breaking team of two years ago was probably our manager of one season, Alan ‘Magic’ Johnston. Jim McIntyre came in to replace him, & took a while to get the support of the fans as he changed our successful 4-4-2 system into a 4-1-3-1-1 type thing which didn’t really work, but he was pretty quick to realise this & went back to the 4-4-2. He still tends to change this depending on the opposition, so I’m not sure how he will line us up on Saturday? 3. Travelling Support There has been a scramble for tickets after it was announced we would be getting less that 1,000 for the match at Ibrox. Tickets went on sale on Sunday to season ticket holders first, but the club has already announced that we have more season ticket holders than we do tickets for this match, so demand is likely to far outstrip supply. The ironic thing is, Queens quite often take more fans to big games in the central belt than we get at Palmerston. We are nicknamed “The Doonhamers”, this is because guys from Dumfries typically move to the Central Belt for University and never move back, but always keep “Doon Hame” in their hearts! A few years ago, we took over 3,000 to a Scottish Cup game at Motherwell, having already taken 1,700 to a midweek game at Hibs, and of course we had 15,000 at the Scottish Cup Final, so I believe we could quite easily have sold at least double our allocation for this game, and there will be a lot of disappointed Central Belt based Doonhamers who will be unable to get a ticket for the game
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 18:02:51 +0000
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