With five of the six goal involvements in Sunday’s game versus Motherwell coming from Daizen Maeda, Anthony Ralston, and Jota, a positive case of posttraumatic growth from the Ange Postecoglou era could be understandable.
All three players featured prominently during his two managerial seasons, of course, and I like to think of the first 33 games of the 2022-2023 season, prior to the split, as the age of Peak Angeball - prior to the material decline in performances as his departure to Tottenham approached.
Through that season’s first 24 league games, the team earned 67 points and was rampaging towards a treble - sounds familiar…hopefully. While this season’s iteration has dropped four more points versus the 2022-2023 team through 24 games, I wanted to take a more in-depth look at the two sides, and explore the following questions:
How close is the current side to performing at a level comparable to Peak Angeball?
Are there any meaningful differences in how the two sides played?
What facets of play could the current team improve, if any, to match or even exceed Peak Angeball?
How close are we to a theoretical Peak Brendanball?
Of course, one could reasonably argue that the Invincible 2016-2017 season was Peak Brendanball, but I disagree with such an assessment. While that team rampaged towards a treble without a domestic loss, the new incarnation of Rangers was cosplaying at a small fraction of our wage bill, and the league was non-competitive as a result.
As for Europe that season, the Champions League campaign was very nervy in qualifying, with an injury time penalty scored by Moussa Dembele to secure passage by Astana. Then, the tie against Hapoel Be’er Sheva culminated with a rather uncomfortable 2-0 defeat in Israel, with the hosts a single goal away from knocking us into the Europa League on away goals….for what felt like an eternity after their second goal was scored in the 48th minute.
In addition, while the three group stage draws were good results given the level of competition, the following season’s team were able to finish third and drop down into the Europa League knockout tie versus Zenit - hence eclipsing the prior season in a sense.
This season’s side has already won three and drawn two Champions League games and qualified for the first knockout stage since 2012-2013, while remaining dominant domestically with a far more threatening version of Rangers.
So with that little summary defending my opinion out of the way, let us get to some of the comparative graphics in the epic battle of Peak Brendanball vs Peak Angeball:
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