THIS WEEK wasn’t just a big one for Rangers and the Scottish Premiership title race.
It was a major one for the club’s captain too.
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Gers slipped NINE points off the league leaders – and the same off second-placed Aberdeen, level on points with Celtic – after a painful 2-1 defeat at Pittodrie.
It left the Ibrox giants closer to Ross County in eighth than the two teams above them in the table and left them embroiled in their own title tussle.
That disappointment came on the back of some eye-watering financial figures a day earlier in the club accounts.
They detailed a £17 MILLION loss and hefty operating costs in the year to June 30 – and did little to ease the discontent among the fans over the start to the season.
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Pressure immediately ramped up on Philippe Clement and his team in the wake of their Aberdeen defeat – a display described as one of the BEST of the season so far by the boss.
And as fans and pundits slammed the situation on radio phone-ins, message boards and social media – the club kept a low profile.
There were NO tweets from the official account on October 31 – and that meant a major miss for club captain James Tavernier.
Not only was it a busy week for club business – it was also the captain’s 33rd birthday.
And in a break with tradition the club DIDN’T wish their veteran skipper many happy returns in what is his testimonial year.
Earlier in October the Gers account posted well wishes to Kieran Dowell (October 10) Vaclav Cerny (October 17), ex-player Ian Durrant (October 29) and even drew attention to the birth dates of Hall of Famers Colin Jackson (October 8) Jerry Dawson (October 30) too.
But the profile missed the captain’s big day altogether – falling as it did on Hallowe’en and hours after the painful Pittodrie performance.
The skipper himself went close to a goal with a header in the final stages of the game, which would have kept Gers closer to their hosts and snatched a draw.
But he glanced the effort wide as Jimmy Thelin continued his unbeaten start to the season.
While it may well have been acknowledged inside Auchenhowie, there was no public post for the former Wigan and Newcastle man who fronted up a day later, ahead of Sunday’s Premier Sports Cup semi-final against Motherwell.
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He said: “The players are fully committed to turning everything around. The lads want to win games.
“Obviously, the manager is getting criticism, and the team is getting criticism, but that happens when you don’t get the results you want.
“It’s down to us as players to improve ourselves and obviously, first and foremost, deliver the results that the club want and the fans want.”
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