Only pride to play for in Seville as Rangers crash and burn in all three home games

Published on Wednesday 25 November 2009 22:44

THE twitching corpse of another failed Champions League campaign by Rangers will not be formally interred until they complete their Group G obligations against Sevilla in Spain next month.

The obituary has already been completed, however, and it makes grim reading for Walter Smith. The lamentable manner of Tuesday night's 2-0 defeat by VfB Stuttgart at Ibrox, which confirmed Rangers will finish bottom of a section in which they were seeded second, was another blot on the manager's record in Europe's elite club competition.

Smith has now taken charge of 29 matches in the Champions League group stage over his two periods in charge of Rangers, winning just five of them and suffering 14 defeats.

Past Rangers Champions League/ European Cup campaigns

Unbeaten in the inaugural tournament back in 1992-93, when his team were effectively semi-finalists, the Champions League has otherwise proved a generally unfulfilling experience for the veteran coach. This season's campaign has proved to be something of a nadir.

Losing all three home fixtures against Sevilla, Unirea Urziceni and Stuttgart, with the concession of ten goals in the process, has shattered Smith's pre-tournament hopes that his current squad were better equipped for the demands of Champions League football than the side who finished third in their group two seasons ago behind Barcelona and Lyon before going on to reach the Uefa Cup final.

If Rangers lose in Seville on 9 December, it would represent their poorest ever points return from a Champions League group. Yet the 1-1 draws achieved in Stuttgart and Bucharest have also served to highlight the ultimate futility of Smith's attempt to deploy a more progressive style of football in Europe this season. Those away results were secured with echoes of the resilience and cussedness which saw Rangers widely accused of playing "anti-football" during their 19-game march to Manchester.

Smith's immediate observation on Tuesday night was that his players had simply been unable to respond when the onus was on them to force the play at home. In seeking to do so, they also saw their once customary defensive discipline completely disintegrate.

Derek Johnstone dismayed by topple of Ibrox 'fortress'

If some mitigation could be found for the 4-1 defeat by a slick Sevilla side, on an evening when Rangers ironically produced their most cohesive football of the season for around an hour before capitulating, there was none when they fell by the same scoreline to European rookies Unirea. That performance and result will stand as the most abject of Rangers' European history in the eyes of many but they could have suffered even greater humiliation on Tuesday night.

Smith's attempt to find a solution reeked of desperation at times, changing his formation three times in the first 20 minutes after the rather startling initial 3-4-3 deployment simply seemed to bewilder his own players.

The final scoreline did nothing to emphasise the superiority of a Stuttgart side who had nine shots on target to zero for Rangers and who dominated possession by 57 per cent to 43 per cent for the home side. It was a night when solid domestic performers such as Steven Whittaker, Lee McCulloch and Kevin Thomson were ruthlessly exposed by Markus Babbel's technically and tactically superior outfit.

But for the brilliance of goalkeeper Allan McGregor, who seems certain to attract significant interest from the English Premier League when the transfer window opens in January, Rangers could easily have sustained their heaviest home defeat in Europe, eclipsing the 4-0 loss inflicted by Juventus in the Champions League back in 1995.

In one crucial sense for Rangers, the Champions League served its purpose this season even before a ball was kicked. The income of around 15 million it brings will clearly enhance their efforts to address the club's financial difficulties. If participation has been painful for Smith's squad and the Rangers supporters, not being there in the first place would have been far more costly.

The implications of Rangers' performances in the competition, however, stretch far beyond Govan. Those followers of other clubs who like to indulge in juvenile schadenfreude whenever the Ibrox team fail would do well to reflect more soberly on what Tuesday night told us about Scottish football.

Here were the Scottish champions, unbeaten in 25 domestic matches stretching back to March, being outclassed, outrun, out-thought and outfought by a Stuttgart side who are currently third bottom of the Bundesliga.

Scotland is currently free-falling down the Uefa co- efficient rankings, our clubs having managed a combined tally of just six wins from the last 37 matches played in European club competitions.

This season's SPL title winners will almost certainly qualify automatically for the group stage of next year's Champions League but are likely to be the last for some time to do so. In the current provisional rankings, which will determine at which stage the tournament is entered in the 2011-12 campaign, Scotland are in 15th place which would see both the SPL champions and runners-up start out in the qualifying rounds.

If Scotland drops out of the top 15, and the place is under serious threat from Belgium in 16th, then only the SPL champions would participate in the Champions League where they would have to negotiate three qualifying rounds to reach the group stage.

It remains to be seen whether Smith, who owes Rangers nothing and currently has yet another domestic title firmly in his sights, is still around for one more crack at the Champions League next season. Irrespective of the dug-out occupant or the identity of the SPL champions, however, the tournament has now become more a theatre of embarrassment than field of dreams for Scottish football.