Walter Smith makes no apology for tactics as Rangers earn Old Trafford draw

WALTER Smith last night defended the stifling tactics which earned Rangers an unlikely point from their opening Champions League fixture against Manchester United at Old Trafford as robustly as he deployed them.

• Walter Smith has reason to smile after his Rangers team defied the odds to take a share of the spoils at Old Trafford. Pic SNS

The Rangers manager fielded an ultra-cautious 5-4-1 formation to secure a 0-0 draw against Sir Alex Ferguson's men but made no apologies for the less than thrilling spectacle played out on front of over 70,000 fans in European football's elite competition.

Smith laid the blame for his strategy at the door of tournament organisers Uefa whom he believes have placed the champion clubs of mid-ranking European countries at an unfair disadvantage over recent years.

"I'm proud of how my players have done while up against a situation that is not of their own making," said Smith. "Uefa are allowing a situation to develop which is totally wrong. Big clubs in smaller countries have been drastically affected by the financial disparity. It's not just Scotland, it affects big clubs in countries like Holland and Portugal as well. Just as 85 per cent of the teams in England have no chance of winning the Premier League, so it's the same with the number of teams who could win the Champions League.

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"It is up to managers to find a way and its easier to stop the opposition than create. I don't feel proud of the fact, but there is nothing left for us to do. Over the last two or three years, our boys have done that extremely well. Celtic and ourselves have handled the situation well in the Uefa Cup or Europa League over the past few years, but it is very difficult in the Champions League with the financial disparity between the bigger clubs and ourselves.

"In the Champions League, we now have to try and nullify the opponents some other way. Scottish teams are now in a situation where we are unable to compete with English clubs in signing the top players from all over the British Isles, unlike many years ago. So we have to try and find another way to succeed.

"So, from our point of view, we are pleased with the determination and high level of concentration the players showed. They restricted Manchester United to very few opportunities."

Smith also dismissed suggestions some of the gloss was taken off his team's result last night by the fact United made no less than 10 changes to their starting line-up from Saturday's Premier League match at Everton.

"Everyone seems to be concerned about that, but I would be delighted if I had the problem Sir Alex has with the number of players at his disposal," added Smith. "I would say that 80 or 90 per cent of the team he played tonight would get into any other English Premier League side.

"We are obviously pleased to get a point from our first Champions League game.We were always going to have to work very hard for it and we did that. I was disappointed that we not tidy enough in possession at times, but overall I'm happy to get a point. You expect to have to defend here and I thought we did that very well in the 96 minutes we played.

"It is far easier to do that than it is to hurt opponents. That was the aspect where, with a bit more care, we could have had better opportunities of our own. But we didn't create much at all. The game was as I thought it would be. We tried to nullify the problems Manchester United were likely to create and we managed to do it reasonably well."

The onus is now on Rangers to try and build on last night's result by improving their home form in the tournament when Turkish champions Bursaspor visit Ibrox in a fortnight. Despite Valencia's 4-0 win over Bursaspor in Turkey last night, Smith is wary of any assumptions being made about their next fixture.

"Each of the Champions League games will cause us problems that we have to adjust to," he said. "Valencia have won 4-0 against a Bursaspor side we have already had watched twice and who we feel are a decent team."

Despite his frustration, Ferguson refused to condemn Smith's gameplan. He did joke that his old friend "should be fined" for playing five at the back, but admitted his own team must take the blame for failing to make a breakthrough.

"It was a very frustrating night for us," said Ferguson. "Rangers' system of play was very difficult to break down. I don't know if playing a different team would have made any difference, although Dimitar Berbatov might have come up with something in tight situations. But we were not short of good players out there. Seven or eight of them played against Chelsea at the start of the season.

"You have to give credit to Rangers. They obviously came here to salvage a point from the game and they got it. I'm not here to criticise our opponents. Every club comes here with a plan and it's up to us to do something about it."

Ferguson's disappointment was compouned by a serious ankle injury sustained by winger Antonio Valencia in an innoccuous challenge with Kirk Broadfoot. Valencia will undergo surgery today and is expected to miss the rest of the season.