Who showed up against the Rangers? Excellent Holec or Krejci, Panak must learn from his mistakes

After Slovácko, the match with Rangers also failed and Sparta will not play in the Europa League in the spring. Why didn’t they get a better result in Scotland and which players played a good game? We’ll look at that in the Spartan blog.

Going into the game it would have been absolutely disastrous, not only was Sparta not an evenly matched opponent, but it even looked like the difference between the opponents was several league grades.

Sparta did manage to recover from this as time went on, but they were still losing after Morel’s goal. Almost the entire defence fell asleep on that one, but the most obvious was Filip Panak, who approached Hagi tentatively, causing him to pass the ball to the scorer.

Panak didn’t perform in the second half either, he tried to play constructively, but chose the absolute worst option and a centre through the whitewash only found Morelos, who scored the second goal. Sparta had their chances at the end, but the reduction did not come.

Why did this defeat come? The reason is simple, Sparta did not avoid unnecessary mistakes in defence and their quality transition to the attacking phase lacked a final pass.

There were chances late on, but Adam Karabec missed a close range header at the exposed goal, then the excellent goalkeeper McGregor worked his magic. Who of the Spartans showed a good performance?

We must praise Dominik Holc, who got his chance, although Florin Nita is healthy and the Slovak made the most of his chance. Compared to Nita, he has good footwork, his passing doesn’t give him any problems, and that’s what worries the Romanian a lot.

Holec is worse on the line than him, but he still helped Sparta with some quality saves and had nothing to do with the goals he received.

Ladislav Krejci Jr. also gave a quality performance, often balancing the ball from his position as a stopper and making good crosses. However, he needs to be able to play higher up, but with the form or injury of the stoppers there was no other option. Moreover, Krejci is a good leader and already now the fans would like him to wear the captain’s armband.

Adam Hložek hasn’t been performing ideally in the last few games, but he fought as hard as he could against Rangers. Just like Adam Karabec, who came on the field for the final half hour and brought the game to life.

We cannot praise Ladislav Krejci senior, who has not had many good games since his return to Letná, but also Panak, who scored two goals. It must be said, however, that apart from the mistakes he tried to play up front and this type of stopper is needed in Sparta, so it is now important how he learns from these mistakes.

Source: AC Sparta Prague