Arthur's Column // 13th September 2022

DUE to the sad passing of Her Majesty The Queen, there was no football at the weekend.

The trip to play Aberdeen in the SPFL Premiership was postponed and that was 100 percent the right decision.

In one respect, from a footballing point of view, there may have been frustration as Giovanni and the players would have wanted to get out and play as quickly as possible on the back of back-to-back defeats.

Losing 4-0 to Celtic and then to Ajax by the same scoreline made it an extremely tough week for everyone.

The best way to get through it is to get back out on the pitch and start winning again.

The next opportunity to do that is on Wednesday night at Ibrox against Napoli in the Champions League.

Napoli are flying right now. They defeated Liverpool 4-1 last midweek and looked an excellent side. They sit top of Serie A after six games.

Luciano Spalletti is a first class manager and has many years of experience at clubs such as Inter Milan, Roma, Sampdoria and Zenit.

Clearly, he gets the best out of his players and Rangers will need to be at their very best to get something from the game.

But let's be positive about this and believe we can do it.

For me, there has been far too much negativity about the Rangers team in the past week or so.

Giovanni has had a lot of criticism aimed at him and I think some people need to have a reality check.

This is the time to get right behind Giovanni and the players.

We need Ibrox to be at its electrifying best on Wednesday for the 90 minutes. The supporters can make sure this happens.

It can be the difference between getting points on the board at the end of the 90 minutes, or not.

The players will need to step up and produce better than what they have in the past two games. Nobody will need to tell them that.

This is the biggest stage in club football and we have had some outstanding results in the past.

Wednesday is an opportunity to get another one and get our Champions League campaign up and running.

Let's all be together in midweek. We stand a far better chance of a positive outcome if we are all pulling in the same direction.