Last night’s disappointing loss for Rangers in the Europa League tie against Rapid Vienna has led to plenty of fallout and mixed reactions since.
It was only a 1-0 loss on the evening at the Allianz Stadion and we did have our chances on the day but simply weren’t clinical enough.
With the usual social media fallout from the more vociferous who write off players and go over the top, I was more interested in midfielder Scotty Arfield’s words when he was interviewed by the Official Site following the game, as for me, he hits the nail on the head.
Rangers should be proud at pushing as far as we did in Europe given the Europa League complications, the fact Steven Gerrard remains new to the job even after these months in charge, and we are still largely a very new group of players.
Some won’t buy that because we’re ‘Rangers’ but we can only be what we currently are, and then we improve from that.
“We need to look at the experiences we have had, and there are so many happy stories in this. Obviously, the reality is we are out the competition, but I think we were punching above our weight in terms of the calibre of teams we played against. From the 12th of July against Shkupi, it shows how everyone has rallied together and the fans have travelled in their numbers and it was amazing again tonight with the noise levels.”
Take the positives, take the better moments, take the experience and the way the younger players involved in particular will have developed from coming up against such sides with slightly different approaches in playing style, and we’ll be better down the line for it.
Disappointing yes, but Gerrard hasn’t expected everything immediately other than effort and improvement and on the whole, we’re getting both.