KRIS COMMONS: Just like Gerrard's Rangers, Gio's side is falling apart

With Celtic dropping points in the lunchtime kick-off at Easter Road, Rangers basically had an open goal to close the gap on their rivals in the title race.

A home clash with Motherwell at Ibrox looked like it would be negotiated with minimal fuss when Rangers raced into a two-goal lead after just 25 minutes.

Bearing in mind that this is a Motherwell team who have been out of form recently. Graham Alexander’s men haven’t won in the league since Boxing Day.

Up against that sort of opposition, and with such a comfortable early lead on which to build, Rangers should have gone on and won by three or four goals. They were on easy street.

Particularly when you consider the high of last Thursday, and the wave of confidence that must have been surging through the Rangers players after knocking Borussia Dortmund out of Europe.

After winning 4-2 in Dortmund in the first leg, they slipped to a lacklustre draw away against Dundee United at Tannadice.

What happened yesterday, though, was worse. Rangers were up against limited opposition, had a two-goal lead in their pocket, had the incentive of closing the gap on Celtic... and still blew it.

For Giovanni van Bronckhorst, the numbers since the winter break do not make for kind reading. In fact, they are awful.

Since the Premiership returned in January, Rangers have now played eight games in the league, winning on only three occasions.

They have now dropped 11 points in those eight games, blowing a six-point lead over Celtic at the turn of the year to now trail their rivals by three points.

OK, so they got away with it yesterday in the sense that they didn’t lose any more ground. Celtic were poor against Hibs and didn’t deserve to win.

Ange Postecoglou’s side have got their own issues