Reality check

Bowery Boy said:
An average run compared to what? I've been watching Rangers for 30 years and we've more often than not been punted out before the last 16. Including eras when we could mix it financially with the elite.
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All you've done is admit to our mediocrity.

Surely, we need, as a club of our stature to be looking at more than a handful of scalps and a few finals in 60 odd years of participation?

We've been conditioned into accepting failure.
 
Inter will put Leverkusen out I think, good team but lack quality in the final 3rd to actually win the tournament, if you were offered Volland or Itten, who would you take? Itten for me all day long.
 
wee bud's pit boots said:
Wire me to the same fc_cking moon then.

Legia Warsaw and Braga?

List their European achievements. Pretty sure there aren't any.

That we've came from Pedro and Progres' to actual progress in just two seasons is wonderful, but it is a measure of how far we have fallen that a win over non entities like Braga is feted as some kind of achievement.

We have overcome a mountain and then some from 2012 to be anywhere near where we got to last night. BUT, it was an average run, and one that a club of our stature should be making every year.

But hey, you wallow in averageness.
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Your argument would make more sense if at any point over the last few decades we had been regularly reaching the latter stages of European competition. We haven’t. You’re stuck in the past and I’m a realist.
 
Tremendous achievement in getting as far as we did. Think where we were three years ago right now.

now if we can just figure out how to deal with the physicality of the scottish game, we’ll be winning this league.
 
wee bud's pit boots said:
All you've done is admit to our mediocrity.

Surely, we need, as a club of our stature to be looking at more than a handful of scalps and a few finals in 60 odd years of participation?

We've been conditioned into accepting failure.
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I agree. But all things considered, this was one of our better runs in the last 20/30 years.
 
If the ref had played the correct amount of extra time, i think we could have nicked the 3 goals we needed. They were tiring and opening up towards the end, there for the taking.
 
A few years back, around this time if year, my old man and I watched a 'reality check' when Magic Hat's rag tag squad surrendered to the scum 5-1. Not long after Luxembourg part-timers out is out of the EL.

From there to here? Aye, shite.
 
We are now very competitive in Europe with the "best of the rest" i.e teams outside the top 5 leagues.
Until the rest of the league's get organized and merge into larger more TV appealing groups the big 5 are going to move further and further ahead.
 
If last night was an indication of where we are, I will take it all day long to be honest.

We got beat by a German team who have a single player worth more than the combined total of our squad, who were pushing hard for CL places and who play in an environment a million miles away from our backwater. If we are a bit behind them, it means we are leaps and bounds ahead of anything domestically except the obvious, and we are in a completely different universe to the Rangers that went to Luxembourg and lost.

This season we could be looking at a more hazardous, although not necessarily harder, progression to the group stages of the EL with the seeded team gaining home advantage in one legged ties. A good few draws are needed but we can confidently look forward to another group appearance and the raising in profile and profits that comes with it.

Domestically? Well, now or never really for Gerrard and this squad. I doubt many would survive a failure.
 
They were superior to us but I don't think we're a million miles away from being able to beat a team like Leverkusen.

I know the current team don't operate in the same way but Walter was able to beat teams of the calibre of Leverkusen with Darcheville and Cousin. The main difference was that they could hold off a defender, if yesterday the ball went forward and were to stick then others would have been able to get forward and create a few chances.

We simply didn't have that option yesterday. Put it down to his head's been turned, not interested or overweight but Morelos doesn't do that for us at the moment. In my opinion Alfie's game has been diminished by the relentless criticism over his aggression and style of play. He does well facing forward or when coming deep but often his touch is poor or he is beaten to the ball when taking the ball around the 18 yard box. I feel that he is trying to be extra careful to not get into trouble as he "just can't help himself".

We've done tremendously well to get as far as we have and Morelos was a huge part of that, if not the main part. I'm hoping that with the new signings the team now has new options and that we'll be more unpredictable. If Alfie stays then the pressure will be taken off him and give him the space to get back to his best, because at his best he's unplayable.

He's led the line on his own for some time now. Good to have some fresh faces in the final third because we're really quite solid in all the other areas of the park.
 
tottie beck said:
Try as I might I cant adjust to the new reality. I grew up seeing us regularly reach finals and semi finals. For the first 30 odd years of my life we went into Europe with serious hopes of going deep in the competition. I know a lot has changed since then and we face a much tougher task these days, but i cant bring myself to seeing Rangers reaching the last 16 of Europe's secondary competition as something to celebrate.

I know its me and I should get with the times and all that but on night like tonight I wonder about how we can increase our income and make our club one of the top players on the continent again, rather than feel good about what is in the grand scheme of things a very average cup run.
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We have a great increase in our revenue but its still light years behind the top five and still a some way behind even the second tier like the Dutch and Portuguese.
So, yes, you do need to get the reality in football, even European football, and understand it’s no longer a level playing field.
We are as far behind the Germans as we are ahead of our championship clubs.
 
McCoistscoresforRangers said:
I don't care about the Europa League this season as long as we win the league.
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I know where you’re coming from but, I’ll ask the same question as I asked at the group stages last season.
Where do you draw your line?
Where are you going to accept the defeat in Europe in the hope that win the league?
At what point will you shrug your shoulders?
 
Bowery Boy said:
I agree. But all things considered, this was one of our better runs in the last 20/30 years.
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Bud, I agree.

Progres' to the latest run (again)? It's a no brainer.

I think since 2012, we have became so inured to incompetence and humiliation that the eyes, so blinded, have lost the ability to look at the bigger picture.

Moi, being one of the biggest culprits.

But how can we hanker towards dreams of Europe, when we can't beat absolute garbage at Tynecastle after three times of asking?
 
Pre Xmas we'd have gave them a game, they're slightly better standard than Porto who we beat and drew with away too. We just weren't ready for that kinda standard at the minute and our main man wasn't at the races
 
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