If anyone had asked Rangers fans pre-match if a draw was a good result, most would have been quite content with that.
This was the mighty Benfica on their own patch, a European finalist of epic proportions who’d normally be Champions League, and Rangers, despite our start to this season and this group, didn’t go to Lisbon expecting all 3 points by right.
At 70 minutes, having well and truly beaten Benfica, Rangers slacked. Not once, but twice, and costly errors led Nunez to nail the equaliser, leaving Rangers fans absolutely deflated.
What a distance this club has come that tonight’s draw felt like a loss, that we managed to throw away a two goal lead and lose ourselves two points felt absolutely devastating.
In truth, any team leading by two and playing far better than their opponent should rightly win, but it’s not over till the fat lady sings.
And poor game management and individual errors led to this one being taken from us.
Indeed, all three home goals were utterly avoidable, but while fingers can be pointed at defence, the attack was unbelievably wasteful.
It’s not a stretch to say Rangers had about 7 goals in them in this match, wasting four giant chances to seal it.
And then defensive errors finished it off.
Disappointing, gut wrenching, but ultimately we’re top of the group and to come this far says more about where we’ve come under this manager than it does about tonight’s failure to hold on.
Que sera, sera.
Everyones blaming Helander, he had a crap game tonight, but if we just kept the ball in the last few minutes instead of trying to play defence splitting passes we would have won the game. It looked like we started to panic, was very unfamiliar of us in the last few minutes of the game. We have managed games very well recently.
Helander had arguably his worst performance in a Rangers shirt but the blame for the 3rd lies with Arfield for me. He’s old enough and experienced enough to know at 90minutes we should be hitting the corner and keeping possession! Ragin that it’s two points dropped when we should have had the game wrapped up. However, as you said if we had been offered a draw and topping the table before the game I’d have biten you’re hand off.
Agree. If Arfield had turned back and given the ball to the outstanding Steven Davis it was game over. I’m surprised at Scotty. He should, and does, know better.
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