The Edu Conundrum

I’m going to keep this short, because it’s about three hours until Christmas day, but I’m a little disgruntled about Rangers’ performance against St. Mirren earlier and blogging about it might take my mind off it because it doesn’t look like the club are going to do anything about the underlying reason why it happened any time soon.

Rangers started today’s match four points clear of Celtic at the top of the SPL. Next Wednesday they go into the derby game, against Celtic. Three points from this match would have been welcome to keep the cushion at the top of the league intact, a safety net of sorts in case they do happen to drop points against their great rivals. Rangers started with a traditional looking 4-4-2, a line up Ally McCoist hasn’t always gone with this season. The midfield consisted of Lee McCulloch and Steven Davis in the centre, with Lee Wallace on the left and Gregg Wylde on the right, servicing a front pairing of Kyle Lafferty and Nikica Jelavic.

With eleven minutes gone, the Rangers manager’s selection, which had been denounced by some internet commentators as negative, appeared to justify itself when left-back Sasa Papac picked out Lee Wallace’s enterprising run with an incisive pass and the nominal midfielder cut inside before eventually bundling the ball past Craig Samson and into the St. Mirren net. However, just ten minutes later Lee McCulloch foolishly and half-heartedly threw an elbow at Graham Carey during a Rangers set-piece and referee Steven McLean felt he had no option but to send McCulloch off.

Assessing his options, McCoist decided that the best course of action was to replace the quiet Gregg Wylde with Maurice Edu, and this I think was his major tactical error of the day. Let me try and explain why.

Maurice Edu isn’t a very good footballer. He’s not particularly bad either though, evidenced by thirty caps for the United States and the 2007 MLS Rookie of the Year award. The problem, it appears to me, is that he’s just average, and the continual selection of an average player is beginning to have an sustained negative effect on Rangers’ football.

After McCulloch’s dismissal and Edu’s introduction this afternoon, Lafferty dropped back into to right midfield; St. Mirren began enjoying huge swathes of possession, and in a couple of minutes before half-time, they’d scored two goals to completely turn the game around. Despite Sone Aluko coming on at half-time for Lafferty, Rangers weren’t able to score again, and they saw their SPL lead cut to just one point.

Is this Edu’s fault? Not specifically. But Rangers title successes in each of the previous three seasons have been tempered by grumbling among fans that the football they play hasn’t been very good at times. Negative. Overly cautious. Anti-football. It’s probably a coincidence that Edu was signed from MLS in August 2008, but perhaps not. Walter Smith’s teams in his second spell at Rangers were famed for being defensively sound first and offensive second, and many of my fellow fans suspect Ally McCoist, despite his goal-scoring heroics as a player, has imprinted on Smith somewhat. Despite injury travails to both players, Smith and McCoist have chosen at least one of Edu and Lee McCulloch in all but five of the club’s last 96 matches. This, the club’s fanbase suspects, is because the two players are felt by the management to be holding/defensive midfielders, who when selected offer defensive reinforcement that compliments Steven Davis, allowing the Irishman to be more creative.

This notion, I feel, is fatally flawed on two counts. It could be argued that Rangers shouldn’t need to play a holding or defensive midfielder in the SPL, never mind two. Secondly, it’s debatable whether Edu can even be considered a defensive midfielder; despite his energetic closing down of players, he rarely puts a tackle of note in, can let players run off him, and more often than not Davis can be closer to his own goal than him.

In an offensive sense, Edu is not noted for his dribbling, shooting, goal-scoring or incisive passing. Combined with his over-exaggerated defensive abilities you end up with a midfield player that can look quietly competent doing the simple thing in a five man midfield when his team is dominant, and less so in situations like today, in a team down to ten men and conceding possession and territory. This is why, when I learned Edu was going to replace Wylde, I became apprehensive. When Edu plays, Davis starts to drop deeper and deeper for whatever reason. This negates him as an attacking threat, leaving Edu as the more advanced midfielder. When Lafferty plays right-midfield, this puts more pressure on Whittaker due to the former’s lack of concentration and poor positional sense leaving the latter’s own defensive frailties more exposed. The net result of this is the Rangers defensive line creeps closer and closer to its own goal, inviting more and more pressure upon it, without any of the four midfielders able to link with the lone striker to offer an out. An out Wylde can and may have offered today.

This is the problem with Edu. It’s less noticeable when Rangers are on top and dominating in games, which is quite often, but when the side are trailing, he is less than useless. In 70 appearances this season and last, he’s contributed seven goals and three assists, which again is kind of average. He may well be contributing to Rangers’ impressive clean-sheet record in recent times, but that could be due as much to the excellent goalkeeper, strong defence and potent attack as it is the nominal defensive midfielder. My concern is thus; Rangers, Walter Smith and Ally McCoist have convinced themselves that a defensive midfielder is a necessity in this day and age, and that Jack-of-all-trades, masters-of-none Edu and McCulloch are the two members of the squad best equipped to perform the role. This unnecessary appendix is dragging the rest of the team down, resulting in the types of dull, fraught, stagnant performances Rangers fans are experiencing in recent times.

Maurice Edu is a decent footballer and may thrive in at a higher level than the SPL. But for the sake of Rangers, he’s got to go.

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