Deflated Gio van Bronckhorst admits ragged Rangers were given a brutal demonstration of the levels required in the Champions League after they were ripped apart by his classy compatriots.
However, the gutted gaffer argued it would cost Gers “hundreds of millions” to build a team capable of going toe-to-toe with the European elite as he again defended Rangers reluctance to spend before last week’s transfer deadline. Awesome Ajax dished out the Light Blues’ second four-goal pasting in the space of five days as the Ibrox side endured a nightmare return to UEFA’s top tournament.
And the Rangers gaffer conceded his team - still smarting from their Old Firm humiliation - better get up to speed quick or their could be further misery ahead. Van Bronckhorst - whose side welcome Italian big guns Napoli to Ibrox next week before October’s battle of Britain double-header with Liverpool - said: “I’m very disappointed.
“We knew the Champions League would be a high level and I think the level we faced in Ajax showed throughout the game with how good and how strong they are. We have to be 100 per cent to be ready for the game.
“You saw that everything goes quicker in the Champions League. The pressure we get, the thinking on the ball, the ball control, they speed of passing. It’s all from a really high level.
“In the first half especially, we couldn’t reach that level and struggled. Every mistake you make on the pitch will be punished by a team like Ajax. The performance wasn’t good.
“The players are committed. They want to play the way we want. They want to fight, they want to work hard.
“But against an opponent like Ajax when you’re not organised in the way you should be, it’s going to be really tough. I think the level we’re used to and the level we need to reach in the Champions League is a big difference.”
Like van Bronckhorst, Ajax boss Alfred Schreuder has been forced to sell off a string of his most influential stars this summer.
But Schreuder has enjoyed the luxury of being able to plough a huge sum of around £100million back into his squad having raking in almost twice that pile of notes by flogging off Lisandro Martinez and Antony to Manchester United and Sebastien Haller and Ryan Gravenberch to Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich.
He spent the largest chunk on bringing Steven Bergwijn back to Holland and it was the former Spurs ace who rounded off a resounding win for the hosts after Rangers’ woeful defending allowed Edson Alverez, Steven Berghuis and Mohammed Kudus to seal victory inside 34 red-hot minutes.
But van Bronckhorst again refused to question the club’s approach to the transfer market, saying: “To compete in the Champions League you need hundreds of millions. Otherwise you can’t compete.
“Look at Ajax, they sold players worth over £200million. Look at Liverpool as well. For us to compete with them it’s too much to ask.
“We want to compete but we want to compete with the squad we have and the squad we’re capable of making. We knew it would be tough and it showed today.”
Van Bronckhorst stemmed the tide with a trio of interval changes as he hooked skipper James Tavernier, Scott Wright and Malik Tillman. The former Feyenoord coach - who has now made five visits to Amsterdam as a boss without picking up a win - said: “It’s difficult you don’t want to give space away to a team like Ajax.
“I think we gave less space away in the second half because we played a little more defensively. The first half we went too quick at our opponents, who dragged players away to make space.
“In those moments we should have stayed more in our zones, which we didn’t do well enough and every mistake we made was punished. Tav already had a knock a couple of weeks ago and he’s struggling a little bit with his fitness. I think it was good to change him for Leon King because you could see he was struggling in the first half.”
Van Bronckhorst revealed he told his players "welcome to the Champions League " at full-time as he recalled his own chastening introduction to the elite competition as a player.
Van Bronckhorst's Feyenoord side were smashed 5-1 by Juventus in the Dutchman's tournament bow in 1997/98. He said: "As I said to the players, we are now in the Champions League. I said 'welcome to the Champions League', because this is the level we are going to face.
"I remember my first game in the Champions League with Feyenoord against Juventus, against Zinedine Zidane, Alessandro del Piero, Didier Deschamps - the big Juventus team.
"I was blown away by the level. I think we were 4-0 down after 30 minutes as well. That was my first taste of the Champions League, and I knew I wanted to reach that level - 'I have to work hard to reach that level'.
"My players had that experience today. They have to take that experience for the next game because the Champions League is the toughest competition in the world.
"We're going to face the best teams in Europe, we want to be in this competition but it's very tough."
