Fans have questioned a claim from Steven Gerrard following Rangers’ 1-0 defeat to Sparta Prague in the Europa League.
A 29th-minute David Hancko header was enough to down an understrength Gers in the Czech capital and Glen Kamara was sent off with a little over 15 minutes remaining for a second bookable offence.
The second straight defeat in the competition, following an opening day loss to Lyon at Ibrox, ensures that the Scottish champions are rooted to the bottom of Group A and now face an uphill task to reach the knockout stages.
During his post-match RangersTV interview, Gerrard started by expressing his disappointment with the result and his team’s position in the group but then suggested that there wasn’t a huge amount wrong with the performance.
“I thought Slavia (Sparta) maybe just edged it in terms of chances but I was really pleased with the boys, especially when we went to ten men – I thought we threw caution to the wind and we tried our best to try and rescue a point,” he said [RangersTV].
“Unfortunately, we’ve lost the boxes tonight. They’ve had one good chance from a set play and they took it, which we’ll need to look at, and we’ve had two very similar chances and unfortunately, we haven’t taken our chances.”
Gerrard would then suggest that Rangers passed the ball well for ‘large parts of the game’ but just weren’t effective enough in the final third.
As far as many supporters are concerned, this was an alarming reaction from the manager.
The visitors may have shaded possession but they were all over the place defensively and created next to nothing, while the hosts had enough chances to have won the game by a much more convincing margin.
Here’s a selection of reactions from concerned fans:
https://twitter.com/Weerthepeople/status/1443659128107380736
Gerrard would then go on to provide an injury update on Juninho Bacuna after he was subbed off in the first half.
