John Souttar has vowed Rangers will deliver a rapid response to their Lyon letdown.
The Ibrox defender is adamant lessons will be learned after the Europa League flogging from the French flyers. But Souttar says the sore one does not simply mean his team can’t compete with the elite of Europe’s second tournament going forward this term. The stopper and his team-mates were left deflated and frustrated after being jolted by Lyon’s livewires.
Philippe Clement’s team were sunk 4-1 as a four-game winning run came to a crashing end at the hands of the Ligue 1 cracks. However, Souttar is adamant the Light Blues will roar straight back. The Belgian boss and his troops now face St Johnstone on Sunday night as they aim to make an immediate recovery from the Euro setback.
Souttar is determined the Lyon lament doesn’t wreck momentum which had been building prior to the contest and said: “Definitely. I think any club in the world is going to have bad nights and good nights and it is how you respond. I am positive we have got a group in there who will respond. It is one night. We were not at our best. We can’t let it affect us going forward. We need to bounce back and we need to do that Sunday.”
Rangers face additional fresh factors going into the encounter against Saints. The match will kick-off at 8pm due to The Great Scottish Run taking place earlier in the day.
In addition, the visitors will also be lifted by the appointment of new manager Simo Valakari who will take charge of his Perth team for the first time at Ibrox. But Souttar says such issues will be pushed aside as he added: “I think the boys will just be desperate to bounce back, so whatever the kick-off was, we will just be looking forward to that.”
As Rangers look to get back on the rails with a dominant domestic display, reflections are underway from the latest Euro experience. Naturally, the Lyon loss offered huge disappointment to the squad.
Boss Clement was annoyed that big chances were missed, with both James Tavernier and, more notably, Vaclav Cerny guilty of missing big chances at 0-0. Within moments of the Czech’s sitter, Rangers were trailing and, despite a leveller from Tom Lawrence, the visitors subsequently ran riot.
But Souttar stated: “It is small margins, both ends of the park I think. We could have done better for the goals and yeah it was a chance [for Cerny], but I’ll need to watch it back. They had quality players and they punished us when they did.”
Rangers had six clean sheets in seven games prior to Lyon, but the level of attacking weapons available to coach Pierre Sage left the hosts run ragged. Given the rear-guard stats going into the contest, it was a shuddering setback with Souttar and Robin Propper fighting in vain to keep Lyon at bay with skipper and main hitman Alexandre Lacazette helping himself to a couple.
Full-backs Tavernier and Jefte were also given a torrid time by the magnificent duo of Malick Fofana and Rayan Cherki. Souttar wants to bury the memory quickly and said: “Look, the clean-sheet run we were on was good and we need to get back to that on Sunday.
“We need to draw a line under [the Lyon game], learn from where we went wrong and get back to business on Sunday. There’s a lot of players playing in the Europa League for Rangers for the first time there and boys who have just played last season, so it is one to learn from.”
The manner of Lyon’s victory suggested a quality gap between clubs with the spending power of the French and the Light Blues. With £120 million splashed in the summer, Sage had riches to burn at Ibrox with big hitters left on the bench and Clement described it as a different world prior to kick off. With Manchester United and Tottenham looming in the remaining six games, there will be more severe tests ahead.
But, asked if any apparent gap can be bridged during this term’s competition, Souttar said: “Look, I think last week we performed really well in the same competition away from home. This [Lyon] is difficult, a sore one, but we need to dust ourselves down and have a look and see what we can do better.
“So soon after the game, you don’t get a fair reflection. You remember things and forget things. It’s a difficult question to answer. I think last season we played against top teams and this season we played against a good team last week and we did well.
“This was an off-night in parts. I thought we did well in spells of the game and in other spells we were poor. It has gone nothing like we hoped it would, but, as I say, we need to stay positive. We have got three points out of six. It’s not too bad.”
Following his Euros omission, Souttar is, of course, back in the Scotland set-up and will be involved against Croatia and Portugal having returned for the previous camp under Steve Clarke.
But it was tough to acknowledge his feelings on it in the immediate aftermath of the Euro setback as he said: “Yeah, I’m happy to be back in the Scotland squad, but it is difficult to reflect on myself after the game because I am obviously disappointed.”