Achievement but also shows Scottish game’s fall

and Croatia – countries where Scottish clubs rarely emerge with anything but their tails between their legs.

They are now within three games of tying the longest European sequences without loss that the Ibrox club have enjoyed in more than half a century.

However, this season, that simply demonstrates how many extra games Scottish clubs must wade through merely to make any sort of mark in the continental tournaments.

Between October 2005 and February 2007, Rangers enjoyed a 12-game unbeaten run in continental competition, a period that covered two different European cam- paigns. In 2005-06, their ability to scrape draws took them all the way to the last 16 of the Champions League under Alex Mcleish.

The following season, in the group format of the old Uefa Cup, the Ibrox side, led by Paul le Guen, found continental competition far more to their liking than the domestic scene as they ran out worthy winners of their section.

Prior to that era, the best such European run for Rangers was a 12-match span underpinned by Rangers’ unbeaten campaign in the inaugural Champions League of 1992-93. That remarkable effort took a team managed by Walter Smith, pictured, to within a victory of the final itself.

It is a measure of how far the standing of Scottish football has fallen and the consequent poor European co-efficient, that Gerrard’s current side are being mentioned in the same breath as those previous Ibrox sides of such pedigree yet are not even guaranteed to progress beyond the group stages in the second-string Uefa tournament.

There seemed a presumption that, following the 2-2 draw eked out away to Villarrealintheirfirstgroupg encounter, that Rapid Vienna would be swept aside at an Ibrox pumped up about bearing witness to European group-stage football for the first time since 2010.

Confidence in such a outcome was drawn from the struggles that the Austrians had endured in their domestic league. Rangers, of all teams, ought not to have paid too much heed to that form guide.

For, in vanquishing Vienna only days after losing to Livingston, Rangers demonstrated that what happens on the home front need not have any relevance to European fortunes.

Such vagaries are making the Gerrard era a curious and thrilling ride. LAST NIGHT

Uefa Europa League

Group A: Bayer Leverkusen 4 AEK Larnaca 2, Zurich 1 Ludogorets 0

Group B: Red Bull Salzburg 3 Celtic 1, Rosenborg 1 RB Leipzig 3

Group C: Bordeaux 1 FC Copenhagen 2, Zenit St Petersburg 1 Slavia Prague 0

Group D: Anderlecht 0 Dinamo Zagreb 2, Fenerbahce 2 FC Spartak Trnava 0

Group E: FK Karabakh 0 Arsenal 3 Vorskla 1 Sporting 2

Group F: AC Milan 3 Olympiacos 1 Real Betis 2 F91 Dudelange 0

Group G: Rangers 3 Rapid Vienna 1 Spartak Moscow 3 Villarreal 3

Group H: Apollon Limassol 2 Marseille 2 Eintracht Frankfurt 4 Lazio 1

Group I: Malmo FF 2 Besiktas 0 Sarpsborg 08 3 Genk 1

Group J: Krasnodar 2 Sevilla 1, Standard Liege 2 Akhisarspor 1

Group K: Astana 2 Rennes 0 Jablonec 2 Dynamo Kiev 2

Group L: BATE 1 PAOK 4, Chelsea 1 Vidi FC 0

TONIGHT

English Premier League

Brighton v West Ham (8:00)