“Didn’t happen” – a major surprise at Ibrox

Rangers last night produced a pretty impressive display to overcome Dutch giants Feyenoord, and while we’ve been heavily critical of manager Steven Gerrard and continue to have creeping doubts about his vision for the club, we can’t argue with the results.

Football is a results-based business, it doesn’t matter how you get there, all that matters is you do, and to that end for all our moaning and bleating lately, Gerrard’s record for the season is just one loss and yet another impressive-looking European campaign.

There were certainly weaknesses last night, and it wasn’t a perfect performance, but it was more than enough to put away Feyenoord who came to Ibrox as one of the ‘group of death’ opponents expected to put Rangers to the sword.

That didn’t happen.

Rangers hit the woodwork three times, and missed some glaring chances – while Allan McGregor did have a save or two to make, Feyenoord were nowhere near as dangerous as expected, and critically, the team put in the work ethic we’d demanded.

Even had we lost last night, the players put in a shift, and honoured the memory of Fernando Ricksen with the kind of guts and determination he’d have been proud of.

Does this result fix everything? Do all our criticisms fade away after a really good night and result? No, our concerns remain, but the more Gerrard keeps winning, the more he shuts us up.

We want Rangers to do well, even if we have doubts now about our manager, and beating Feyenoord and getting our UEL group campaign off to a player is ‘doing well’ by any stretch of the imagination, especially on a night our city rivals could only stumble to a draw in France.

So it’s a good start. We saw this European adventure as a bonus, but with results like that, we can’t help but wonder just how far we’re capable of going in it.

We’ll see, shan’t we?