Steven Gerrard: Fear and panic hindered Rangers’ fightback against 10-man Malmo – and we paid the price
STEVEN Gerrard last night admitted that “fear and panic” had prevented his Rangers players from staging a comeback against 10 man Malmo after they conceded two second-half goals in the Champions League qualifier at Ibrox last night.
The Scottish champions, who lost 2-1 in the first leg of the third qualifying round tie in Sweden last week, levelled the double header on aggregate when Alfredo Morelos netted in the first-half.
When Bonke Innocent was sent off for the visitors for a second bookable offence in added-on time at the end of the opening 45 minutes it looked to have increased their chances of winning and booking a play-off spot.
READ MORE: Detailed player ratings from Ibrox as Alfredo Morelos shines and Leon Balogun fails to impress
However, Croatian striker Antonio Colak scored twice in the space of five minutes and Jon Dahl Tomasson’s men recorded a comfortable 4-2 triumph.
Gerrard was disappointed at how his team defended at Colak’s strikes – and how they lost their composure when they tried to fight their way back into the game in the last half an hour.
“I felt even when we had them where we wanted them we were going round and round rather than trying to pin back their defenders and play to our front men more,” he said.
“Look, we did really well tonight for 45 minutes. We got them in a position where we really wanted this game. The fans were terrific all night long.
“But we got two restarts badly wrong in the second-half and we have paid for it. The reality is at this level you can’t concede two goals in the first leg and two goals in the second leg because you make things really difficult for yourself.
“That is the most frustrating part. We have lost the second-half 2-0 to 10 men. Defensively, from the restart we’ve been really poor. There’s no way to dress that up. We need to be better in those situations.
“I felt we stayed with the game. We still tried to get back into it. We tried to create. We had some really good opportunities to get back into the game. Alfredo had a header. We tried to keep the heat on.
“But from the situation of being 1-0 up at half-time, to then go 2-1 down, you have to try different things. A bit of fear, a bit of panic set in. We were putting hopeful balls into the box rather than trying to stay calm and play through them with a bit more calmness. We have got the second-half performance wrong and that’s on all of us.”
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