Rangers: Steven Gerrard could have Ryan Jack back next week
- by Rene Duval
- in Sport
- — Aoû 10, 2018
Rangers will now head to Slovenia on Thursday aiming to set up a meeting with Ufa or Progres Niederkorn and move to within two matches of the group phase. Look, good players get attention from other clubs. It's an important goal for us but we certainly won't be getting carried away by the score line.
"I thought the players were terrific tonight, especially second half". He handled it very well and that was probably his strongest performance so far.
"We played with aggression and organisation". I thought that against Aberdeen he was superb, he put in a real selfless performance out there for the team.
Based on his first couple of games the above Tweets say it all really, now if he can find full consistency and we can see what he's capable of then, and if he can keep that form going for the majority of the campaign - all players have dips after all - then we really could be laughing and then it's whether or not we have to pay through the nose or whether we have a buy clause on the loan. But then something didn't feel right from about 15-20 minutes until half-time.
He rounded his own individual performance off with our third goal on the day to ensure an aggregate advantage as we go into the second leg overseas and it certainly found favour within the fan base. People were jumping out of slots to go press on their own and it didn't look right for 20 minutes. "It's very close to how we want it to look", said Gerrard, whose side were pegged back after Alfredo Morelos put them in front after only five minutes. The challenge for us is whether we can do it over 90 minutes because if we do, we'll be a very good team.
Rangers could have had an easier night if they had doubled their advantage before Maribor scored but were left frustrated as a Morelos strike was ruled offside following a pass from Daniel Candeias.
On the night, supporters took to Twitter to praise the performances of the goalscorers with Morelos in particular coming in for plenty of praise.
He said: "He's a machine and is exactly what this football club needed in terms of an enforcer who enjoys biting into tackles and pressing and doing the ugly side of the game".
