Journalist Craig Swan has slammed James Sands for his ‘nightmare’ Old Firm performance in Rangers’ weekend defeat.
In the last round of Scottish Premiership fixtures, the Gers travelled away from home for the first Old Firm clash of the season.
Unfortunately for Rangers, they were comprehensively beaten 4-0 by Celtic after conceding goals from Liel Abada, Jota and David Turnbull.
On a pretty woeful day, it seems as though one man stood out for all the wrong reasons. Indeed, on a poor day for the defence, Sands was singled out for his efforts at centre-back.
In his player ratings for the Daily Record, Swan handed the defender a 4/10, writing: “Named at centre-back and endured a nightmare outing as he was unable to get to grips with the home attack. American was unable to distribute properly under the intense strain and exposed.”
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Stats provided by SofaScore show that only two other Rangers players lost the ball more often than Sands’ total of 13 – backing up Swan’s claim that he was ‘unable to distribute properly’ – which may explain to a certain degree why Celtic were able to dominate so much.
Having played nine times under Giovanni van Bronckhorst this season already, it’s clear the American is a trusted man in the team, but sadly, it looks as though he wasn’t able to deliver much of a performance on such a big occasion.
Indeed, Swan noted that Sands was ‘unable to get to grips with the home attack’, and considering Rangers let in four goals, it’s hard to argue with that. All in all, it was not a good day at the office for the 22-year-old.
Just lazy football by players Celtic_fc_1888 players just kept running of their opponents and players passing them on instead of going with them it was a doing for new club in town