Steven Gerrard's Rangers crashed out of the Europa league this evening, losing 1-0 to Rapid Wien after a late header from Dejan Ljubicic.
After the game Gerrard praised his players for their endeavour in the competition, admitting that they fell short of what was required to escape the group stages:
If you analyse the whole journey the players have done fantastically well, but the reality is at this level we fell a bit short and it’s my job to address that.
But what I will say is we will come again. We will come again. It’s important now that we get back to winning ways domestically and we focus domestically now to put ourselves in a position to come back again.
The players deserve incredible praise for taking this group to the wire. I believe if we were full strength tonight and had everyone available the situation might have been a little bit easier.
But to come here and play against a good team, an organised team, who were fit and very mobile and experienced at this level? What we had was a little bit short.
"We will come again in Europe and next year we will be better."
Steven Gerrard is proud of how far his Rangers side have come during their European run.
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— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) December 13, 2018
The former Liverpool captain was also asked about the situation regarding Liverpool loanee Ovie Ejaria before the match. The midfielder has raised concern after deleting his Twitter account as well as removing Rangers from his Instagram account.
There have been reports that the England youngster does not enjoy the physical side of Scottish game and Gerrard revealed in Vienna that he is set for crunch talks with the 21-year-old:
That’s something I need to discuss with Ovie. I had a chat with him a few days ago and he’s slightly unsettled.
Liverpool are aware of the situation. We’re in dialogue with them and I’ll have a conversation with Ovie on Friday and see where we go from there.
