Rangers were always going to be up against it when Lyon came to Glasgow with the French outfit packed with expensively assembled talent.
Philippe Clement did his job as manager by picking the team that most fans expected, however, a packed Ibrox was particularly unhappy with one man in Light Blue.
A fast start saw Rangers dominate the opening stages and could easily have been two goals to the good before Lyon opened the scoring with Vaclav Cerny particularly culpable.
Fans fume as Valcav Cerny blows chance to be Rangers hero
The Czechia winger has been on a poor run of form recently and was involved in some verbals with his own fans against Hibs.
This time, the stick was self-inflicted, blazing over the bar with the goal at his mercy from only six yards out and nobody to beat.
No wonder fans weren’t happy:
Clement knows missed chances are costing Rangers
Rangers can’t keep missing so many big chances.
It was an issue against Malmo, however, the defence was resolute and the Swedes were kept at bay.
Against teams like Lyon – and Celtic – Rangers will get punished.
There isn’t much specifically that the Gers boss can do other than set his team up to create chances and he is fully aware of the problems that missing so many are causing, as he said after the first derby of the season:
“We need to be clinical in these games, to go in front it changes the momentum and it would have helped the team a lot to go in front here and we didn’t.
“We did good things with the ball, but we need to be more clinical in those moments.”
Clement is right, going a goal in front gives the crowd a lift, it also gives confidence to the players.
When a team misses so many and then concedes from the first chance, it only makes the defenders more nervous.
One of the key components of Rangers successful run to the Europa League final in 2021/22 was scoring the first goal.
A raucous Ibrox is an intimidating place and Rangers fans need to feel that they can trust their team again.
Rangers are a team in transition at the moment but that doesn’t excuse individual moments of ineptitude like Cerny’s miss – or Connor Barron’s blind pass to nobody that led to Lyon’s second.
