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Daily Record
Daily Record
Sport
Robbie Copeland

Ally McCoist slams 'unacceptable' Rangers as he pinpoints alarming stat behind worst ever Champions League campaign

Honest Ally McCoist can accept Rangers finishing bottom of a tough Champions League group. But he struggles to stomach the fact his old team RAN less than Napoli, Liverpool and Ajax on their way to recording the worst ever group stage record.

A 3-1 defeat to Ajax completed a nightmare return to the top European table. They finished with no points, two goals scored and an incredible 22 conceded for the worst showing the competition has ever seen to crash out of Europe with a whimper.

Gio van Bronckhorst was quick to highlight the financial disparity on show and McCoist echoes the manager, pointing to Ajax being the third best team in the group by a distance but still being able to sign Rangers ' "best player" in Calvin Bassey for £22million after add-ons. But the Ibrox hero just won't accept Van Bronckhorst's players not working harder than the opposition.

After giving some context to the situation, talkSPORT host Laura Woods asked McCoist "where do we go from here?" and he hilariously responded: "We go to Spurs, that's what we do. Straight to Spurs!"

But then he added: "The level of one or two of the performances were completely unacceptable. Out of the whole campaign I can only really remember a reasonable hour against Napoli at home and an acceptable 45 or 55 minutes against Liverpool at home.

"Recruitment from Rangers has not been good at all. You lose Bassey to Ajax, you lose Aribo to Southampton, you lose Patterson to Everton, you lose Balogun - who for some reason wasn't offered a contract - to QPR, you lose your best centre-half through injury.

"You end up playing against Ajax in the Champions League with a young kid at centre-back accompanied by a midfielder on loan. You have no chance, absolutely no chance.

"There have been a couple of statistics that disappointed me but the big one is the running stats. In every game, the opposition have run more than Rangers. I find that difficult to accept particularly when you don't have the majority of possession. If you have that then common sense would indicate the opposition have to run about more than you, so Rangers' running stats should have been better. They've been poor.

"A bigger concern for me would be Rangers' level of performance at Celtic Park in a couple of league games. The results in the Champions League have disappointed me, one or two of them have shocked me, but I'm not overly concerned or surprised both teams have finished bottom of the group."

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