A competition that has so often brought comfort for Rangers is now causing the same pain as domestic duties have been of late. <\/p>\n
The Champions League was the initial goal for this side. Now the Europa League is proving a stretch.<\/p>\n
Graz – like Genk last week – are far from the top of the crop in the second tier competition. The latter’s defeat to Ferencvaros on Thursday would attest to that. <\/p>\n
But in the opening 45 minutes, Rangers were floundering against in Austria.<\/p>\n
The first goal would have had fans hiding behind their cushion. The second, scurrying behind the sofa. <\/p>\n
It was the 23rd away game in a row in all competitions in which Rangers have conceded. It beat a club record that has stood since the Victorian era (22 between 1895 and 1897).<\/p>\n
Once they regrouped at the interval, there was an undoubted improvement. But again it was once Martin’s side were already on the back foot.<\/p>\n
And when they did open up – by ripping up the script, system and structure – Rangers were lost at the back. A better team will punish them further.<\/p>\n
Better teams are to come – Braga, Porto and Roma to name a few – and already, qualification hopes appear to be dwindling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A competition that has so often brought comfort for Rangers is now causing the same pain as domestic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-185999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}