Rangers man pleads for patience after Celtic crumble - and why he's ignoring Danny Rohl criticism
Defender says players are to blame - not head coach Rohl
Rangers defender Emmanuel Fernandez gave a glance upwards and paused to collect his thoughts after being asked to give his assessment on the Ibrox side’s 2025/26 campaign.
The imposing 24-year-old was the first player to emerge from the Rangers dressing-room in the aftermath of yet another 45-minute collapse, this time against Celtic. The bookies' favourites to win the league just three weeks ago, the 3-1 defeat at Parkhead officially ended their hopes of winning the title and means they will finish third in the Premiership table.
The hard inquest began at the final whistle - and Fernandez was offered the platform to explain what has gone wrong.
“I feel like when it comes to the point where you could potentially win the title people are going to question your mentality,” admitted Fernandez. “Look, I don’t think it has anything to do with the mentality, I just think there are moments where we need to do better. Sometimes, this happens in football, sometimes you come under duress, and we just didn’t come through it.”
Bought in for just £2.5million from Peterborough United in the summer, Fernandez has been a rare net-positive at Ibrox this season. Linked to the likes of Borussia Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen after an impressive first season, he’ll likely look back on his debut season with a degree of pride. However, it offered little comfort when confronted with the reality that he and his teammates had ultimately crumbled when the pressure was turned up.
“We obviously started [the season] off not the best,” said Fernandez. “We fought back and brought a bit of joy to the fans. We had moments where we thought we could be successful. We fell short at the end and I feel like that is something we need to look over and improve at. I couldn’t pinpoint an issue, I just feel like maybe we needed to have a bit more fight.
“I can’t say we have been unlucky. I can take stick for it because there are certain moments I probably should have defended better, but there is nothing I can really say about my teammates. The [dressing room] was more quiet. We were all disappointed in ourselves that we couldn’t bring a win to the fans. Right now I am just ready for the new season to start so we can have a big threat next season.”
Their third consecutive defeat in the Scottish Premiership split, the heat has been turned up on head coach Danny Rohl, with sections of the Rangers support claiming to have already lost faith in his management. Fernandez, a virtual ever-present since the Germans’ arrival, empathised with the fans’ anger, but refused to blame Rohl for his side’s failure to sustain their title challenge, and he threw his support behind the head coach.
“I don’t look in to what fans say about the manager,” he explained. “But I know about the manager 100 per cent. I know that he got us through moments in the season where everybody thought the season was over and there wouldn’t be a title race for us. I feel like maybe we went into it with the wrong mindset.
“It is the players who should maybe take it, because we didn’t do the job on the pitch and it is something that we should improve on. I feel that, as a young team, if we are going to grow, if you are going to struggle you stick together and all defend together. That is something we have to improve on.”
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