Proud Gerrard backs his men to bounce back from setback
his charges, who came through four qualifying rounds to reach the group stages, and insisted they would recover from the setback once he had improved his squad further.
“I thought we were good for 80 minutes,” he said. “I can’t really ask the players to give any more from what we had available tonight. We gave an almighty effort.
“Obviously as the game was getting to the final stages we were trying to roll the dice and be more adventurous to try to create something.
“Unfortunately, we’ve conceded a counter-attack. But it’s very hard for me to criticise the players for what they gave.
“I felt like we played very well for large parts of the game. The players deserve incredible praise for taking this group to the wire. I believe if we were at full strength tonight the situation might have been a little bit easier.
“I think once we analyse the whole journey we will certainly take ourselves back to Moscow at home, 0-0, a couple of chances we missed. We’ll take ourselves back to Moscow away when we scored a perfectly good goal [that was disallowed].
“We will also analyse our individual mistakes within it. We could have put ourselves in a better position tonight. But it wasn’t to be.
“I think if you analyse the whole journey the players have done fantastically well, but the reality is that at this level we fell a bit short. It’s my job to try and address that.
“But what I will say is we will come again. It’s important now that we get back to winning ways domestically and we focus domestically to put ourselves in a position to come back again.
“The idea now is to park the Europa League and really focus on the league. I think we have had a tough week and I think the support we’ve had during that tough week has been really good. I think we owe the fans a reaction on Sunday.”
Meanwhile, Gerrard revealed he is to speak today to Ovie Ejaria, the Liverpool loanee who didn’t travel to Austria amid speculation he could be set to leave Rangers.
“I had a chat with him a few days ago,” he said. “He is slightly unsettled. But the next time I speak to Ovie will be Friday, so we’ll have a conversation and see where we go.”
Asked if Rangers had missed Ejaria against Rapid, Gerrard said: “I think we missed all our good players that weren’t available.”