sport news JOHN McGARRY: Rangers' toiling to reach the Champions League has scarcely been ... trends now
After clawing their way back up the divisions and winning the Premiership title last year, a return to the Champions League was always regarded as the final stretch of Rangers’ journey.
If a reappearance on this stage for the first time since 2010 was seen as necessary in order to bookend the chaotic years which followed insolvency, then this experience has proven to be far more traumatic than cathartic.
Never has the old wisdom about being careful what you wish for felt more apt as Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s side have slid from one disaster to the next. Never has the Europa League felt so appealing.
Rangers players applauded a very empty-looking Ibrox at full-time - ending a disastrous eight weeks in the Champions League
Whether this level of football has simply moved on since the Ibrox men were last involved or they’ve simply failed to show their true selves, it’s been hugely chastening. Ajax put the tin lid on it all on Tuesday night.
Pitched in with Napoli, Liverpool and the Dutch, surely only the most wide-eyed optimist in the Copland Road end envisaged Van Bronckhorst’s men making the last 16.
Bluntly, given the disparity in resources, parachuting into the Europa would have been a laudable achievement. Even missing out on that while straining every sinew would have been forgivable.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst watched on as his side officially became the worst to grace the competition
What we’ve seen from virtually the first moment in Amsterdam eight weeks ago, however, has been a long way short of acceptable.
That four-goal rout at the hands of Ajax set the tone for a thoroughly miserable campaign that continued up until the final whistle sounded in game six.
Sure, they were in the game until Napoli scored in Glasgow. They also succeeded in keeping the score down at Anfield and in Naples.
But that seven-goal hammering by Liverpool at Ibrox, featuring six second half goals, became emblematic of a truly feeble effort over the piece.
As tough as this task always was, no one can say they anticipated the failure to be quite so pronounced.
In May, Rangers were a penalty kick away from winning the Europa League against Eintracht Frankfurt. They’d beaten good sides like Braga and Red Star Belgrade to get there, Champions League class sides in the cases of Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig.
Van Bronckhorst has come in for major criticism as a result of the poor European campaign
So when Union Saint-Gilloise and PSV Eindhoven were dispatched in the qualifiers, players and supporters were entitled to believe they could make an appreciable impact.
Heading into Tuesday's finale desperately trying to avoid the ignominy of being the competition’s worst ever side was not the kind of impression anyone had in mind.
Whatever criticisms can justifiably be level at the Rangers manager,
