Rohl heartened by Rangers’ mindset shift

From fear to courage. From hope to expectation.

Things are motoring along nicely for Rangers at the moment – win after win a tangible reward for the progress made since head coach Danny Rohl was appointed towards the end of October.

The German was named January’s manager of the month on Tuesday, which he described as “a little prize on the road to hopefully bigger prizes”.

However, what means more to Rohl is the evolution of his side in big matches, the latest of which comes at Motherwell on Wednesday.

“A couple of weeks ago maybe we were a little bit too respectful, too fearful, too scared for such a game,” Rohl said.

“Now we’re looking forward to it.

“We have to deliver again and again. If we do this, then we have a great opportunity to make the next small step on our journey.

“The mindset is always to go for a win instead of a draw because then you are not fearful or too respectful.

No problem in front of goal, these days, given the eight put past Queen’s Park in the Scottish Cup at the weekend.

There have been far tougher challenges than the Spiders for this resurgent Rangers side, but they have only suffered one defeat in the Premiership under Rohl – a 2-1 loss at Tynecastle in December.

That record is evidence for the head coach of not just improving performance but a far tougher mentality.

“Ten to twelve weeks ago, you’d go into games and you thought ‘hopefully, hopefully’.

“Now you go into a game saying ‘of course we will win and if we do this, this and this right, we have a big opportunity to take the next few points’.

“This is the most important thing with the players – to go into games and think ‘if we do our things 100%, we will win games’. This winning mindset is great.”

After seven victories from their past eight Premiership outings – the only blip being a goalless draw at Easter Road – that winning mentality is now well and truly established, with Rangers firmly in what appears to be a three-way fight for the title with Hearts and Celtic.

A lot more will be learned about their resilience and mental fortitude by the end of this week, when they will have faced league-leaders Hearts as well as in-form Motherwell, who have not conceded so much as a goal at Fir Park since the middle of October.

“We have to deliver game by game and it starts really tomorrow,” Rohl said.

“It feels great at the moment that we’re on such a run. That we took a lot of wins, conceded fewer goals, and are scoring goals. All things that give us a big belief and trust in what we are doing.