Rangers ran out of steam against Benfica on a night when, as the game went on, seemed to be heading the way of whoever didn’t make any mistakes at the back.
Gers boss Philippe Clement will be frustrated that the deciding goal came from our own corner as a drenched Ibrox held its collective breath hoping for an offside decision.
The encouraging thing is, Rangers went toe to with Benfica with Derek McInnes nailing what the difference between the two sides was on the TNT coverage.
Rangers don’t have enough to beat Benfica
Clement’s injury list is an extensive one and the lack of options in the final third has caught up on us.
Speaking after the game, Kilmarnock boss McInnes was right when he said.
“The difference between the two teams was that Benfica had more quality in the attacking areas.”
Ironically, Rangers gifted Benfica the three goals over the two legs.
A dodgy penalty, an own goal and a counter-attack where we left Jack Butland wide open.
But where McInnes is right is that Benfica seemed to know what to do with the ball when they got into the final third.
They were decisive and clinical when the chance came.
Compare and contrast to the opportunity that Cyriel Dessers got early in the second half.
He cuts inside onto his left foot then tries to side foot it with his right, even if it didn’t take a deflection, it was still going wide.
For a £4m striker, it should have been a relatively straight forward effort with the left foot either aiming for the bottom or top corner.
In these games, you need to take this sort of chance, Benfica did, Rangers didn’t, and the Portuguese team are into the next round.
Sometimes you are beaten by the better team and, on this occasion, we probably were.
It doesn’t make the manner of the defeat any less frustrating though.
