{"id":606874,"date":"2026-08-28T04:22:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T04:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/606874\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T04:22:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T04:22:12","slug":"mcinnes-mortified-as-rangers-exit-conference-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/606874\/","title":{"rendered":"McInnes ‘mortified’ as Rangers exit Conference League"},"content":{"rendered":"

Derek McInnes was left “mortified” by Rangers’ UEFA Conference League play-off exit following the 4-3 penalty shoot-out defeat to Jablonec<\/a> in the Stadion Strelnice.<\/p>\n

Leading 1-0 from the first leg at Ibrox last week, the disjointed Light Blues deservedly found themselves level on aggregate when Jablonec midfielder Vakhtang Tchanturishvili scored in the 73rd minute with a drive and the game went to extra time.<\/p>\n

There were no more goals which brought penalties, and although Gers keeper Ivor Pandur saved from Filip Zorvan, Rangers attacker Findlay Curtis fired his spot-kick over the bar and James Penrice was thwarted by Jablonec keeper Jan Hanus, leaving Jan Chramosta to fire in the decisive penalty.<\/p>\n

The Govan side were knocked out of the Europa League qualifiers by Polish side Jagiellonia Bialystok and the rebuild of Rangers by McInnes, who has signed 12 players with more to come since arriving from Hearts in the summer, is up in the air.<\/p>\n

McInnes said: “First of all, I\u2019m embarrassed with the performance. I think the only people who represented the club well tonight were my staff, the support staff in the preparation.<\/p>\n

“We do so much right here to get the players ready and in peak condition to go and perform. And the supporters, who to a man were outstanding, getting behind the team despite watching what we all watched.<\/p>\n

“It wasn\u2019t a good performance at any stretch of the imagination. Then you think you might just get through.<\/p>\n

“It shouldn\u2019t have come down to two boys, James Penrice and Findlay Curtis, in tears for missing a penalty kick. It shouldn\u2019t have come down to that.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m not going to sit here and make any excuses whatsoever. It wasn\u2019t good enough.<\/p>\n

\"JABLONEC
\nRangers players react after they were eliminated from the Conference League<\/p>\n

“I thought the opposition were better than us in most aspects of the game so we got what we deserved. If we\u2019d won it on penalties, we\u2019d have taken it, of course, because of how important that is. But we\u2019d have covered over the cracks, to be honest.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m mortified by the performance. I know you can lose games of football, but we should have enough in the building to take care of that tonight.<\/p>\n

“Yes, there\u2019s been a big turnover of players. Yes, we looked very inexperienced at times. But the responsibility is mine to make sure that we are better than what we served up tonight. And we were miles short, miles short.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019ll take responsibility for the result, but the responsibility is shared. The players have got to be better than that. We know that. It\u2019s my job to help the players but they\u2019ve got to help themselves as well.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s such a low point. I\u2019m embarrassed with the result. I\u2019m gutted for the supporters because they\u2019ve come here. We come over on a charter flight, we stay in a nice hotel, we get all the preparation, and they come here whatever way they can.<\/p>\n

“They don\u2019t always need to see their team perform brilliantly, but they do deserve to see their team perform way better than that. For that, it\u2019s not good enough.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Derek McInnes was left “mortified” by Rangers’ UEFA Conference League play-off exit following the 4-3 penalty shoot-out defeat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-606874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}