Gary McAllister rubbishes rumours of unrest at Rangers

Rangers assistant manager Gary McAllister has rubbished rumours of squad unrest during the club’s winter-break training week in Dubai.

Gary McAllister insists Rangers' fightback against Braga proved their togetherness. Picture: SNS.

A whispering campaign has attributed a post-shutdown slump that has hit the club’s title chances to a schism in the UAE between certain senior players and others considered to have become overly-emboldened about the team’s position after the derby victory at Celtic Park. But McAllister, right, pointed to the unity of purpose shown by the squad in their outstanding 3-2 comeback win over Braga in the Europa League as proof that suggestions of any splits in the camp have no basis.

“I can say, absolutely 100 per cent, that there was no unrest in Dubai. That just wasn’t the case,” said McAllister, who insisted the trip to St Johnstone today was more important than the return leg in Braga on Wednesday.

“Dubai was fantastic for us, it went really well. Thursday night proved our togetherness. It’s self-explanatory, just by watching the visual. It’s just there, you can see it. All that talk is part of being at a big city club. There will always be people assuming things. But trust me, that’s nonsense. It’s par for the course at a big club.

“The best way to put all that to bed is to get results and get a run going again. Results haven’t gone our way. The performance levels haven’t been good enough, we acknowledge that. But in all of those games, we had good chances. On Thursday night we took them. But at any level, you have to produce in those moments. We had them [in the defeats] at Hearts and at Kilmarnock. If we’d put them away, everything would look different.

“We’re a tight staff, we support each other. We’re discussing reasons, why, what, when, there’s no stone unturned. We can break it all down. We’ve got 20 wins, three draws and three defeats in the league. And that’s not enough because we’re still a good bit behind Celtic [with the gap ten points].

“There are loads of things we could say to make it look better. But the facts are we’re behind in the league and doing OK in Europe. The word crisis is used too often.”

He added: “If we can replicate the form of the first half of the season, you never know what can happen.”