Rangers star confident of sustained title challenge as insight given into Ibrox dressing room mentality
Towering centre-back insists Rangers have the stomach to sustain Scottish Premiership title challenge after Livingston slip-up
Emmanuel Fernandez is confident his Rangers team mates will continue to “fight and fight and fight” to maintain their Premiership title bid following their latest slip-up against 10-man Livingston on Sunday.
The Ibrox side were 2-0 down after 55 minutes at Almondvale after goals from Brooklyn Kabongolo and Lewis Smith had the league’s bottom club in dreamland as they searched for a first win across all competitions since August.
But central defender Fernandez reduced the deficit in the 81st minute with thunderous strike and Mikey Moore restored parity with two minutes remaining of the 90, but Danny Rohl’s men were unable to find winner after nine minutes of stoppage time.
It leaves Rangers four points behind Hearts at the summit and two ahead of this weekend’s visitors Celtic, who have a game in hand still to play over the top two.
Asked if Rangers need to show that type of comeback character in their remaining 10 league games this season, the towering defender agreed, saying: “There’s 30 points to play for and I feel like we’ve shown character to come back in many games this season.
“And we showed character to come back to this stage where we are in the season, and we’ve got to fight and fight and fight and keep hunting.
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“I could feel the fire in the players’ bellies in my team and I know there’s a lot to come from us and we have just got to stick together and keep going.
“We were 2-0 down, we show good fight to come back. I know we’ll be disappointed about this, but there’s 10 games to go, and we have just got to keep fighting.”
Rangers star acknowledges need to draw first blood in games
Rangers came from behind twice last weekend to beat leaders Hearts 4-2 at Ibrox and the former Peterborough United centre-back has acknowledged the importance of drawing first blood in games.
He commented: “We don’t want to be in these moments and games, we don’t want to be behind. We want to be ahead and we want to keep going and going and getting more goals and more goals.
“But if this happens in games, we just got to keep going and keep fighting. And sometimes when you go through moments like this, you have got to find a way to get back into the game and that’s what we did on Sunday.
“Things like this happen in football, it’s a long season, and results sometimes don’t go your way, and moments sometimes don’t go your way. But I think we showed good character to come back into this game and we’ve shown that we are a team and we showed that we’ve got a lot more to come and a lot of moments to come as well.”