His Championship leaders are now nine points clear of nearest challengers Falkirk, who visit Ibrox next Saturday, and Warburton revealed the biggest motivation for his players was hitting back at criticism from unnamed pundits and media following the first defeat of his reign. Credit to the players, they never let that happen, it hasn’t happened since I’ve been here. It was good to have a game so quickly after such a disappointing result.
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Watch highlights of Rangers’ 4-0 win over Greenock Morton in the Scottish Championship.
Warburton said: “They were riled by some of the comments and they were ready for it”.
“I think it’s a fearless way of playing football”, he told reporters. As players we were frustrated because we want to win every cup we are in. We want to be courageous and attack on the front foot. “Everyone says he’s not a prolific goalscorer but he is doing all right so far”.
“They were hurt. The criticism was a little bit disrespectful”.
“It was important to win again – we’ve played 13 games and won 12 and that’s something we’d have taken at the start of the season”.
“I still feel there is a lot more to come from him and his second goal was clever and the penalty was clinical, he is a very talented player and in my eyes he’s only going to improve“.
“We gave them the first goal which was disappointing”.
“They’d already had six penalties this season so we warned them not to dive in – but we dived in and gave away a penalty”.
“They were relentless for the rest of the first half and we just had to stay in there”. What would have been a disgrace is if we had thrown the towel in.
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Rangers maintained control, keeping possession for long spells – and after substitute Kenny Miller had forced a good save from Gaston following a neat passing move, Rangers rounded off the scoring when Waghorn finished high into the net from 10 yards after the home defence failed to deal with a cross. They worked hard, we were as organised as we could be but we were up against a side whose movement and imagination was outstanding which is why they are nine points clear in this division. Nathan Oduwa was very good today.
