James Tavernier has said sorry to the raging Rangers fans who demanded better after another Champions League hiding.
Gio van Bronckhorst’ s side suffered their worst ever defeat at Ibrox on Wednesday night when Liverpool leathered them 7-1. To compound a horrible night for Rangers, they lost Connor Goldson to injury and Record Sport understands the centre-back could be out for months. He limped out of Ibrox on crutches and it’s believed he suffered a suspected severe tear in his left thigh with the club’s medical department bracing itself for bad news as they await confirmation from scans.
The Rangers players were accused by some fans of chucking it as Mo Salah racked up a hat-trick in little more than six minutes. Tavernier emphatically denied that was the case but did hold his hands up when admitting the performance was simply not acceptable, especially in front of their own fans.
The Ibrox captain said: “We obviously apologise. We never want to lose to that kind of scoreline to anybody, no matter what team it is.
“We have worked so hard to get to this point. You see the away game. It was 2-0 but we had a chance down there and limited them to two set-pieces.
“But to concede seven at home in front of your own fans is never good enough. You never want to see that.
“Obviously you can take the positives out of the first 45 and then it’s 55 minutes before they score again. But it’s the Champions League. We are proud to be competing with these teams but we need to work hard and look at the things we have done wrong going forward.”
When asked if the players had given up the ghost, Tavernier said: “Never once would I look at any team-mate in my team and know that they’d chuck in the towel.
“It’s simple. Liverpool made three substitutions in Jota, Salah and Thiago, all world-class players, and they caught us trying to play football in the wrong areas. They capitalised on it and that’s the difference. They are world-class players and if you give them a chance or a sniff, eight times out of ten they have a chance of taking it. That’s what they did.
“We are disappointed with the scoreline. I felt we competed really well in the first half.
“We got ourselves in front and really limited their chances. But when it gets to the final whistle and you see the scoreline of 7-1, you just feel disappointed.
“When you give them the chances that we did with the quality they have...we tried to limit it but we didn’t do good enough in that aspect.
“We went in 1-1 at half-time and we were really positive. We wanted to continue doing what we did in the first half.
“They sort of dropped back a bit and set the traps for us when we tried to push a bit more, as obviously the space was there. With the attackers they have and the pace they run at, it obviously made it difficult for ourselves.”
Under-fire van Bronckhorst revealed after the game he didn’t say anything to the players but Tavernier insists they had a debrief. He said: “We always do after games. Win, lose or draw., we have a chat.
“We will take the positives and negatives out of games. If we win, we will still take the negatives out of it and try to learn from it, correct it and make ourselves better.
“This was another one and it was a meeting to go over the game. As you can imagine, emotions are high after the game but we have looked over the game, analysed it and looked at what we can work on. We take it into account and we work on it.”
Tavernier has been sent reeling with the loss of Goldson but insists Rangers have enough leaders in the dressing room to cope without his vice captain. He added: “Connor will be a big miss. But he is in and around the building and I’m sure he will be around the changing room, handing out his voice.
“We have great leaders in the squad. We know what it takes, we demand off each other and we will continue to do that.”
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