Surface tension won’t be an issue for Stevie

STEVEN GERRARD has no fears over the plastic pitch at the Neftyanik Stadium as Rangers bid to clinch a Europa League berth against Ufa this evening.

The Light Blues have made the journey to Russia with a 1-0 advantage in the play-off round tie thanks to Connor Goldson’s first-half goal at Ibrox last week.

Gerrard put his players through their paces at the Hummel Training Centre yesterday morning before making the flight to Ufa from Glasgow.

The 4,600-mile round trip is far from ideal preparation for the first Old Firm clash of the campaign with Celtic on Sunday.

But Gerrard is confident the synthetic surface and time different won’t have any impact on his side.

He said: “We will go for a look in the morning. Reports are that pitch is very good, it’s high end in terms of those kind. But we take a look for ourselves.

“We’ll be staying on UK time, so we haven’t arrived late. We’ve arrived maybe a few hours late but we’ve done all our preparation back in Glasgow.

“That’s quite normal. You always take into consideration the length of flight, the arrival time and the time change and we decided the best way to do it was to stay on UK time and prepare in Glasgow.

“We don’t see the pitch being a problem. It’s the same for both teams and Rangers have experience of these surfaces in our domestic league.

“I think it’s three teams that use artificial surfaces and we also have an artificial surface at the training ground so this is not the first time for my players.”