JASON Holt has been blunt in his assessment that Rangers’ season has ultimately been a failure.
The Ibrox club are destined to finish third in their first season since coming up from the Ladbrokes Championship, but the midfielder didn’t attempt to hide the disappointment within the group over the last 12 months.
Holt explained how as well as playing better than they have, Rangers came into this season aiming to become Celtic’s main title challengers and given their Glasgow rivals a contest in the Premiership. With one game to go of the campaign, Pedro Caixinha’s team are in third, nine points behind Aberdeen and a staggering 39 behind Celtic.
“The expectations are what they are at this club, they won’t change - we just need to meet them,” Holt said. “Obviously last season everything was great because we were winning the majority of our games and achieving our targets. This season has been the complete opposite. It's been disappointing. The targets we set for ourselves we’ve not achieved. It's just been disappointing campaign.
“It was well documented we wanted to challenge Celtic and finish solidly in second. We’ve not achieved that.
“Obviously most of the noise was coming from outside and we don't pay too much attention to that. Celtic have been playing European football for a number of years now. But the targets were set for us at the beginning of the season and we failed to achieve them.”
As things stand, Rangers have won less than half of their Premiership fixtures. By any Rangers team’s standard, that’s not good enough. Victory away to St Johnstone this afternoon would at least make it 19 from 38, and Holt added: “The expectation to win week in week out is always going to be here at a club like this and as players we’re no different, we expect it of ourselves.
“But winning fewer than half our games? To go and challenge, that's nowhere near it. We’ll need to perform a lot better next season.”
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