Antwerp honour Rangers’ request to stay off pitch
FRANK VERCAUTEREN insists Royal Antwerp were happy to obey Rangers’ demands and stay off the Ibrox pitch.
The Belgians agreed to a request to put in their final preparations at Rangers’ Auchenhowie training base rather than the stadium in order to protect the Ibrox grass ahead of tonight’s Europa League return.
The Great Old trail 4-3 after last week’s thriller and need two away goals at least to turn the tie around.
But Vercauteren insists he can see the green shoots of a recovery sprouting despite his team being denied a close-up look at Rangers’ home patch.
“It was a demand of Rangers,” he said when asked about the decision to train at Auchenhowie.
“I’m a football fan, so I want to protect the field to play the game. We don’t want to demolish the field with respect to the opponent and ourselves.
“We want to play in the best conditions. That’s why we are here. When you are a professional team, you have to understand the demands of the other team. We would not want another team to kill our field.
“That’s why we are training here instead. Training the day before the game is not so important. We have to consider reality and that we lost the first leg and now need to score two goals more.
“Knowing that task and the quality of the opponent, we know we need to defend better than the first leg. We have to find a balance in our play – between very good defending and attacking play – is very important.
“We know Rangers are favourite and they have quality. But in football, anything can be possible. All we can do is our maximum and if we are beaten in the end then we have been beaten by a better team.” Antwerp defender Maxime Le Marchand has been impressed by Steven Gerrard’s defence, which has conceded just nine league goals on domestic duty this term.
But he reckons the absence of injured skipper James Tavernier will make it easier for his side to scale Gerrard’s blue wall.
He said: “There were things last week that didn’t go according to plan. We know we have to put them right this time and know what we have to achieve. That is scoring at least two more goals than Rangers.
“There is a strong belief that it is still possible to do something tomorrow, if we avoid the mistakes we made last week.
“Rangers have a very good defence, that’s very clear from the fact they have conceded only nine goals in their league.
“But last week we were able to dismantle the defensive side by scoring three goals and creating more opportunities. We know something is possible. With the absence of Tavernier, maybe even more possibilities might arise.”