It's a speech he’s had to deliver plenty of times before. But James Tavernier breathed a weary sigh as he admitted the job of picking up Rangers’ shattered squad never gets any easier.
The Ibrox skipper was yesterday aiming to tick the final box and complete his sweep of Scottish football’s major trophies a week after having his name added to the Light Blues’ Hall of Fame. Instead, he’s been left to fling another runners-up medal on what is becoming a considerable pile of second prizes after once again coming up against a Celtic side that were simply out of reach.
His job now is lift a group of players that face going emptied handed unless they can stave off the Parkhead outfit’s treble charge by winning the Scottish Cup. As Rangers trudged back to the Hampden changing room in the immediate aftermath of yesterday’s frustrating no-show, Tavernier concluded it wasn’t the time or place for him to attempts words of encouragement. But he knows he’ll have to strike a chord soon or risk another season ending on a bum note. He said: “It’s part of football, it is part of being the captain as well, I have a strong head on me and we will go again. This one is going to hurt for a while, but we can’t put ourselves down too much.
“We have got to try and rectify what we are doing wrong and push on. We need to finish the season better, I have had my words in there.
"I am not going to go into too much detail but we have had an honest chat and we will have an honest chat through the week. It’s obviously important (to lift the spirits) but it’s one of those ones where everybody in there knows we’ve let a lot of people down.
“That’s the why it hurts, because we’ve let so many people down in a manner that we didn’t want to. Going through the week, we’ll have our chats and we’ll have our meetings, it’s hard to get your word across now because there’s so much frustration.
"But with a calm head through the week we’ll go through a lot of things. It’s going to sting no matter what, we’ll have a chat through the week and go through the performance and go through the clips, it’s something we need to address.”
Celtic were always the favourites to lift the cup that has been in almost permanent residence at Parkhead following six wins in the last seven years. But the promise shown since Michael Beale’s appointment raised hope round the blue half of Glasgow that this might be the first crack to appear in Ange Postecoglou’s reign of dominance.
That notion dissipated as soon as Celtic’s midfield trio of Callum McGregor, Reo Hatate and Aaron Mooy gained control of the engine room as they powered their way to victory thanks to poacher-in-chief Kyogo Furuhashi’s close-range double. For a brief 15-minute spell, Beale’s men threatened to make a game of it after Alfredo Morelos pulled one back but it was all too little, too late from a Rangers side that have made a habit of putting in patchy displays under their new boss.
“It was an unacceptable performance from ourselves,” said the skipper in blunt assessment. “The first half wasn’t good enough, we know that, and conceding before half-time left us more to do.
“We conceded the second one then got our goal, created another good chance but we wasted too much time in the game to react and that is the most disappointing factor. We knew what to expect but, as a team, we have to show up on the day and I felt that we didn’t do that for large parts of the game.
"We all have to look in the mirror and be honest with each other. I think a lot of things (went wrong), we didn’t get close enough, we didn’t impact our football like we wanted to, that gave us a hill to climb.
“We need to figure out what’s going wrong when (the slow starts) happens and address it. It’s about having chats with each other, it’s something we have to address because the main performance we have shown recently from the start was obviously the game away at Hearts.
"We have shown it in parts of other games, but we need to be really at it from the start, it was a final and to not be really at it from the start is really disappointing, we obviously got some belief when Alfredo scored and we then went on to create a couple more chances.
“But you can’t give away that much time in the game to try to get yourself back in it, so we’re disappointed with that. It’s the first defeat we’ve had under the gaffer, we’ve been getting the results that we wanted to but when it mattered, we didn’t get the result.”
Nine points in arrears to Postecoglou’s Premiership leaders, the odds on a meaningful title race emerging in the final 12 games of the campaign aren’t exactly enticing. But the demand from the Ibrox faithful will be that their team now go all-in on the Scottish Cup as they look to deny their bitter rivals yet another clean sweep.
Tavernier said: “At Rangers Football Club, you have to win every single game. That’s the mentality, but you have to show up and we didn’t do that.
“Now we’re going to play Kilmarnock trying to get the three three points and win as many games as possible until the end of the season and see where it takes us. It is the first defeat since the manager has been here, this hurts for the fans, ourselves and our families.
"We have let a lot of people down and that is what hurts the most. We just have to stay together as a team, we have also made progress, there is still more progress to come and I feel we are going in the right direction.”
