Steven Gerrard conceded that he may have started with the wrong front line after Rangers drew with Brondby in Copenhagen last night.
The Scottish champions fell behind through a Leon Balogun first-half own goal and 11 minutes after the restart, Gerrard made a triple substitution to remove Alfredo Morelos, Fashion Sakala and Scott Arfield.
In their place, he brought on Kemar Roofe, Ryan Kent and Ianis Hagi, with the latter two linking up to score Rangers’ equaliser. The Scots are third in Europa League group A, behind Sparta Prague on goal difference, and the Czechs travel to Glasgow in a fortnight for what promises to be a pivotal match in the race to be second behind Lyons.
“There was more there for us, more than a point,” Gerrard said. “When you go a goal down, at this level, to take something out of the game, it’s a positive I suppose. But 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.
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“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.”
