Analysis Corner: Why Rangers are struggling to score goals
Last updated 28th Mar 2017
By Dougie Wright (@dougie_analysis)
The Mark Warburton era at Rangers is over. There were plenty of symptoms leading to it, but the root cause was a simple lack of goals. Rangers have only scored more than twice in one match this season- a 3-0 victory against Kilmarnock at Ibrox. Over the course of the year, the team has been scoring less than a goal per hour of football played.
In fairness, you can probably exclude one man from this criticism.
With 5 goals in his last 6 games, Rangers have been relying on Kenny Miller in recent times. However, their fans would be well warned to look back to how the 38-year old’s season began before proclaiming him as their saviour. While 4 goals in his 25 matches isn’t a terrible return, it’s certainly not fantastic.
Has Miller turned a corner? Or will he regress to less than a goal every five games? The answer, as usual, will lie in between. Nevertheless, he remains Rangers’ clearest goal threat.
Now the worrying bit: when you remove Miller from the equation, not one Rangers player has scored more than three goals in twenty-four Premiership games.
To put that into context with second place rivals Aberdeen and Hearts, they each have four players with over three goals so far.
So why is this the case?
Recently, I’ve been developing a measure called HiQS (you can pronounce it “hicks”). It stands for high quality shot, and includes any clean shot taken in this area of the pitch:
If shots were cars, these would be the Ferraris.
If you take ten HiQS, you should score around four goals. If you took ten shots from anywhere on the pitch outside this area, you probably wouldn’t score any.
This makes a lot of sense logically. You’re closer to the goal, the goalkeeper has more of the line to cover, and shooting with your feet guarantees far more accuracy than a header would.
For these reasons, defenders really don’t like their opponent taking shots from this area.
However, to flip that on its head, if a team can manage to get these shots away in such a protected area of the field, it means they’ve managed to unlock the opposition defence. Watch teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern: they all excel at scoring these close range goals because their movement has totally frazzled their opponents.
To bring it back to Scotland, Scott Sinclair has scored all 12 of his open play goals this season from HiQS. Similarly, Moussa Dembele has taken 27 of them: HiQS have accounted for all but one of his goals from open play this term.
Looking at Rangers’ strikers shows the gap:
Even combined, Miller, Garner and Waghorn haven’t had the same opportunities as Scott Sinclair.
Indeed, looking at Rangers’ past three matches against Morton, Ross County and Hearts, the team produced just six HiQS in total. Celtic made just as many in their first half against Inverness on Saturday.
While Rangers have averaged nearly fifteen shots a game this season, they lead the league in shots off target, shots from distance and blocked shots, as well as having the lowest conversion rate. This is symptomatic of a team which has struggled to unlock opposition defences on a regular basis.
Whoever takes over next would be well advised that quality beats quantity any day of the week.
For more analysis like this, follow Dougie Wright on Twitter (@dougie_wright)