Olympiacos defender Panagiotis Retsos praised Rangers boss Philippe Clement for doing his homework on them after the Ibrox side claimed a draw in the Europa League – as Nice boss Franck Haise labelled their Europa League showdown against the Light Blues this month a must-win game.
Rangers picked up a good point against the Europa Conference League winners in Athens after an equaliser from striker Cyriel Dessers. And Greek international star Retsos credited the way the Ibrox men set themselves up against them.
He said: “It seems like Rangers had studied us closely because they were very good at shutting down our attacking qualities so credit to their coach for that. And I can understand that because of the performances we put in last season when we won the Europa Conference League. If I were them, I would have wanted us to be cautious too. But it wasn’t the result we wanted. When we play here, we play to win and we have done that consistently recently.
“We conceded a goal from individual errors that we shouldn’t have conceded. They happen in football. We have to work on them. I’m not happy. We wanted the three points because it would have been a big advantage for us.”
Rangers sit in a respectable tenth place in the new-look tournament and have high hopes of finishing in the top eight which would get them automatic qualification for the Round of 16. Nice battled back from going 2-0 down to Twente Enschede, with ex-Rangers flop Sam Lammers netting for the Dutch side, to rescue a point.
However, they have yet to win a match in their four games so far and sit in 31st place out of the 36 teams. And manager Haise knows they must beat Rangers to have any chance of making the top 24 and the play-offs.
He said: “It’s very clear that if we want to continue our progress in this competition, we must win our next game against Rangers at home. That game will be decisive along with our last game of the year against Union Saint-Gilloise.
“We have to win because we have not managed to do that after four games. We can say that we managed to be resilient and the 2-2 draw is good because it looked unlikely at one stage. But I cannot ignore the first hour against Twente because we were not at the required level. We lost two players late on to injury and that had an impact, but I have to take responsibility for not winning a game yet.”