NICKY Hayen, the Club Brugge manager, has revealed that his side “knew where the spaces were” in the Rangers team before they took to the field at Ibrox last night.
The Belgian club found themselves 3-0 up after 20 minutes in the first leg of their Champions League play-off double header thanks to some lamentable defending by their Scottish rivals.
Russell Martin has been heavily criticised by pundits and supporters for the porousness of his team’s rearguard in their competitive matches this season and the manager had his goalkeeper Jack Butland to thanks for preventing a mauling last night.
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Hayen, whose side reached the knockout rounds of Europe’s premier club competition last season, admitted he and his coaching staff had identified weaknesses they could exploit in the build-up to the encounter in Govan.
However, Hayen stressed, after watching Danilo pull a goal back for Rangers in the second half, the tie was far from over and insisted that James Tavernier and his team mates could still come back and progress to the league phase of the competition.
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"We said before the game, ‘Okay, the atmosphere is incredible, but you have to embrace the atmosphere and not fight against it’. This is what they did in the first seven minutes perfectly and this is the way how you can get the silence into a stadium.
"But as long as there is still 90 minutes to play, everything is possible. We don't forget that we are 2-0 down against Salzburg (Club Brugge came from behind to prevail also. So we have to be smart, we have to be intelligent, play our best football, like in the first half."
