A COURAGEOUS RESPONSE

STEVEN Gerrard revealed he had to urge his players to believe they belonged on the same stage as Villarreal as they hit back to claim an impressive 2-2 in Spain. The Ibrox side suffered a nightmare start to their Europa League campaign as Carlos Bacca put the hosts ahead inside 44 seconds at El Madrigal. And Gerrard (right) felt his men lacked the confidence to really mix it with the Laliga big guns during a tepid first half. But after an interval pep talk, Gers showed they were more than a match for the Yellow Submarine as they refused to be sunk.

Scott Arfield and Kyle Lafferty struck either side of Gerard Moreno’s goal to hand the Light Blues a deserved draw in their Group G opener.

Gerrard said: “I’m very proud of my team, especially in the second half, which I felt was a very strong performance.

“We obviously got off to the worst possible start, going a goal down inside the first minute. Sometimes in football you’ve got to hold your hand up and it was a wonderful strike from Carlos Bacca.

“The message at half-time was to show more belief and have more courage in our play by making passes.

“I was concerned at half-time that we were going to have regrets. When we won the ball back we never kept it well enough.

“We never had enough belief when we were getting into really good areas.

“We didn’t really believe we could cause the opposition problems. But from halftime we went and did it and we could have scored a few more goals.

“It was a crazy end to the game - we could have won it through Scott Arfield and at the same time we could have lost it. But that would have been really harsh on us - we deserved a point tonight.”