Rangers Exits Europa League Early as McInnes Admits Team Isn't Ready
The boos told the story long before Derek McInnes did.
Rangers, a club that sells itself on European nights and big-stage pedigree, are out of the Europa League in early August. A 1-1 draw with Jagiellonia Bialystok at Ibrox sealed a 3-2 aggregate defeat in the third qualifying round and delivered the club’s earliest exit from the competition since 2017.
Four games into McInnes’ reign. No wins. No patience left in the stands.
‘It wasn’t good enough’
By full-time, the noise had turned poisonous. The Rangers support let their team know exactly what they thought of it, and their manager didn’t try to sugar-coat anything.
“It was justified, to be honest,” McInnes said of the boos. “It wasn’t good enough. What we served up, particularly second half, wasn’t good enough.”
This is a club that measures itself against Europa League and Champions League standards. McInnes knows it. He lived it as a player. That’s what made his next admission sting.
“We need to be honest, the club’s built for Europa League and Champions League and that’s the intention, to get there,” he said. “But I’m not sure the team is quite ready for it at the moment and it pains me to say that, to be honest, it does.
“We need to get more quality, we need to try and get more confidence out of the team.”
Tactical gamble, partial reward
Injuries stripped him of left-back Tuur Rommens and striker Youssef Chermiti, so McInnes rolled the dice. Five changes from the weekend defeat to Hibernian. A back three. Wide players asked to run themselves into the ground.
“I felt we had to make the game open and it was a bit too open at times in the first half,” he explained. “Gassama and Yakota playing as kind of effectively wing-backs, we were asking a lot of them at times.
“But I thought it paid dividends in terms of penalty box action, getting the goal.”
Rangers did carry more threat. They dragged themselves level on the night and into the tie. At 1-1 on the evening, McInnes felt his side had at least earned that position.
“I thought we were good value for getting it one and a half-time, but I still thought that Jagiellonia had a couple of scares.”
The pattern, though, is becoming familiar. Bright spells. Then a drop. Then punishment.
“Once again, it’s not another 90-minute performance,” McInnes admitted. “That’s been in the Rangers for a while now. It’s been a continuation of that this season, already.
“In the four games we’ve played, we’ve had some good moments, but it’s not been good enough and certainly not a strong enough 90-minute performance.”
‘Inexplicable’ goal and loss of composure
The decisive blow, in McInnes’ eyes, was as much about mentality as it was about shape or system. The concession that killed Rangers’ hopes left him furious.
“But for us to lose the goal. It’s inexplicable how we don’t make a foul, how we don’t stop the flow of the attack, how we don’t just sanitise that whole situation.
“It’s not lack of bodies, it’s lack of intelligence, it’s lack of doing the right thing, to be honest.
“We lost all our composure after that, if I’m going to be honest with you.”
In a few lines, he had summed up the current Rangers: fragile, easily rattled, incapable of seeing out a European tie they should, by their own standards, be winning.
Sixth man in, same old problems
McInnes is Rangers’ sixth permanent manager since Steven Gerrard walked away in 2021. The churn has been relentless; the problems, stubbornly familiar.
He knows exactly why he is in the job.
“What we served up last year wasn’t good enough. You get a job for a reason,” the former Hearts head coach said.
“You get a job to try and make things better and obviously sometimes you get it because things aren’t quite right, and we have to try and get things moving the right way quickly.
“There’s no two ways about it, we should be winning this game.”
“Rangers, as strong as they can be, should be winning this day and we have got work to do between now and the end of the window, but between now and Sunday to get ready to win a [League] Cup tie [against holders St Mirren].”
The Europa League door has slammed shut before the season has truly settled. The transfer window clock is ticking. A League Cup tie against the holders waits on Sunday.
For a manager already under scrutiny and a support already on edge, how quickly can Rangers start looking like a team built for Europe again, rather than one being loudly told it isn’t?
