'Kyle Lafferty could have been a hero at the end. Could have been. The story of the night'

Late goals in games such as this can appear cruel, can have something of the jammy about them, the get-out-jail card and all that. Not here, not this time.

Sporting weren't much cop, but neither were Rangers. The visitors left it late but they deserved a draw because the home team weren't good enough to put them away when they had the chance. Sporting are a team that are going through a period of uncertainty at home - their president departing, their director of football departed and their manager living the day-to-day existence of a boss under fire - and yet they had the spirt to get themselves back into this tie when it looked like Steven Whittaker's soaring header was going to add to their mountain of woe.

You couldn't really see it coming, but come it did. In one twist of his neck, Matias Fernandez turned this tie from a Rangers opportunity to a Rangers trial.

They are now underdogs to progress. Some might day that Walter Smith won't be broken-hearted but he sent his team out to win this game and the fact that they didn't do it had nothing to do with lack of effort. They tried. Tried hard. They were undone by the things that dogged them all night. Slack marking, lost concentration, sloppy passing, sub-standard finishing.

The closing minutes were instructive, most of them being played out against a backdrop of singing from the visiting Portuguese, small in number and yet crystal clear amid the otherwise stunned silence at Ibrox.

• In pictures: Rangers v Sporting Lisbon

They were drowned out only twice late on, when Kyle Lafferty legged it in on goal on two separate occasions in the dying embers of the match, squeals of anticipation giving way to roars of anger as the striker, in his infinite wisdom, decided that the best way to beat Rui Patricio in the Sporting goal was to thump his shot straight at him. He needed to do better. They all did.

Little had fallen right for Rangers before Whittaker's goal, but that jump to the high heavens looked like liberating them from their own frustrations. Frustration from El Hadji Diouf who worked like a trooper, making runs that weren't spotted, finding space but not getting the pass. Frustration from Vladimir Weiss who flitted in and out of the match, throwing a shape here and there and contributing little of substance until swinging in the corner from which Whittaker scored. Frustration too for Lafferty. Big Kyle. Midfielder or forward? Footballer or fraud? He could have been a hero at the end. Could have been. The story of the night.

At least we got a game in the second half. The first? Well, it was wretched. You didn't need to look at the pitch-side branding to know that this was the Europa League as opposed to the Champions League for the evidence was everywhere. It was there in the stands and the 16,000 empty seats, and it was there in the football from both sides - inaccurate and infuriating.

The songs (early on at any rate) were not upbeat dreams of Europe but rather grim reminders of domestic strife. Chants about Celtic and fenians filled the Broomloan Road stand for a short while. What desperados are these? Sunday, clearly, was too long for them to wait to cut loose with such poison.

Rangers were toiling, but they were trying. At one point, not long after Lafferty nutted one over from straight in front of goal and six yards out, a little song went up for Kenny Miller and that at least was a cry you could empathise with. The lost Miller might have made all the difference here. The ineligible Nikica Jelavic undoubtedly would have.

At the break, the man on the PA did his usual routine, wishing somebody a happy birthday, congratulating a couple on the birth of their child, saying a big 'hello, hello' to a young boy who was getting his first taste of the Ibrox experience. Standard stuff. Nice.

Then the fella started telling the story of some heroic charity folk, a hardy band of Rangers people who were about to head off to the Arctic to raise money for good causes. Teddy bears off to meet the polar bears. Quite honestly, given that another 45 minutes awaited us, you felt like joining them.

It improved though. Rangers came back with attitude and purpose and got the lead. They tried to overcome their lack of accuracy with a strong will and it appeared to be working until the death knell of a free header for Fernandez.

A dozy moment and they were done. Some Lafferty misses and it was over.

The faithful departed quietly, Ibrox being left to the joyous ranks of the visiting fans. They have had little to cheer about these last few months. Rangers missed a big opportunity to keep it that way.