Angry Steven Gerrard blasted his gun shy strikers last night after they fired blanks in Brondby and threatened to shoot their remaining Europa League hopes in the foot.
The fuming boss made a triple substitution ten minutes into the second half in Copenhagen - hauling off both Alfredo Morelos and Fashion Sakala as well as Scott Arfield - after Scotland’s champions had fallen behind in the dying seconds of the first half.
With his Group A hopes hanging in the balance Gerrard sent on Ianis Hagi, Ryan Kent and Kemar Roofe in a desperate throw of the dice.
And it paid off when Kent set up Hagi for a crucial equaliser 14 minutes from time - earning a 1-1 draw to set up a win or bust showdown with Sparta Prague at Ibrox.
But the late salvage job did little to appease the Rangers manager who said afterwards: “There was more there for us, more than a point.
“Obviously when you go a goal down, at this level, to take something out of the game, it’s a positive I suppose.
“But I think having competed against that opposition, I thought they were there for the taking and the maximum points.
“We underperformed tonight, certainly in the first half. There was a massive improvement when I made the substitutions. We passed the ball better, looked more dangerous, we were overloading them in the right areas.
“But the first half? I thought the whole game was lacking in quality to be honest.
“Maybe I got the front three wrong today, or the front three didn’t bring to the game what I wanted and what I expected of them. There are two sides to it.
“Once we got the right players on the pitch with quality in the right areas, I thought we passed through them, I thought we looked more dangerous.
"If any team was going to go on and win the game, it was us. We left it too late by starting at half-time.
“We’ve conceded a sloppy goal again. But in terms of quality and what we brought to the game in the first half, we were nowhere near it."
