MARTYN WAGHORN last night insisted Rangers supporters should blame the players and NOT Graeme Murty for their bad form and successive league defeats.
The club’s season reached a new low on Friday night when the-then bottom side in the Ladbrokes Premiership, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, beat them 2-1 in the Highlands.
Aberdeen are now nine point clear in second place of Rangers and enjoy a vastly superior goal-difference.
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Caretaker manager Murty has come in for some flack, but Waghorn insisted the fault lies with the players and not the promoted youth coach.
Waghorn said: “We are hugely disappointed and deflated. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but we have got to stick together. It is a frustrating time.
“We have got to get back to the Rangers training ground and work hard. The only way we can get out of this is by working hard, staying together and trying to turn it around.
“It is only us who can do it. Nobody else is going to do it for us. It is up to us as players to take responsibility.
“The players are together. Obviously it is a difficult time not having a full-time manager, but we are still the same squad. Murts knows the direction that we are going in. He has got everyone on board. It is up to us as players to take responsibility.
“We know what we have got to do, it is just a matter of executing it. On the day against Inverness Caledonian Thistle we weren’t good enough in front of goal.
“It is part of football. It is all about how you respond and how you react to adversity. Listen, this is a difficult time. It is tough. But I can’t stress this enough, it is only us who can turn it around.
“We have to work hard on the training pitch and work off it together as a team. Doing it for the club is all that we can do.”
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Waghorn realises the calls for a new manger to be put in place will grow stronger after two poor defeats to teams near and at the foot of the table.
He said: “I can understand that because we haven’t won games and at Rangers you have got to win games and be going forward.
“Listen, the last two results are nowhere near the level that we should be at. But, like I say, we need to rally and stick together as a team going forward.”
The aim this season was second place and even that now seems a forlorn hope with in-form Aberdeen creating a sizeable gap.
However, a defiant Waghorn said: “We have got to play Aberdeen again twice. It is obviously not ideal them being so far ahead. We have got a big challenge ahead of us, but we know what we have got to do.
“It is going to be difficult, but we can turn it around. We have got a lot of good players in the squad and a lot of belief. Never say never. We have got to just go again.”
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One of the key problems for Rangers is they continue to concede first. Indeed, they have done so six times out of their last seven games.
Waghorn admitted this was an issue and said: “Yeah, it is giving us a tough challenge. It is making our lives difficult. Inverness were down there fighting for their lives and they were always going to make it difficult for us to win.
“It is something that we need to address. If we get the first goal it’s a different story. We have made it difficult for ourselves and that is something that we need to sort out.
“You are playing for Rangers. You need to be clinical, you need to score goals and you need to win games and we are not doing that right now.”
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