James Tavernier has issued an apology to the Rangers fans following their hammering by Liverpool and insisted nobody chucked in the towel.
The Light Blues went down 7-1 in part two of their Battle of Britain showdown with the English Premier League side at Ibrox on Wednesday night. Scott Arfield had initially sent the home crowd wild with the opening goal of the game but a hat-trick from sub Mo Salah, Roberto Firmino's double and solo strikes from Darwin Nunez and Harvey Elliott secured a big win for Jurgen Klopp's men.
It leaves Giovanni van Bronckhorst and his Rangers side rooted to the bottom of the Champions League group with zero points after four games. They are now officially unable to reach the next stage of the competition with two matches left against Napoli and Ajax. There are still hopes of reaching the Europa League with positive results needed from the final two fixtures.
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Speaking to the official Rangers website, the club skipper said: "We can only apologise, we never want to lose by that kind of scoreline to anybody. We worked so hard to get to this point but to concede seven at home in front of your fans is never good enough.
"We can take some positives out of the first 45 minutes but it is the Champions League, we are proud to be competing with these teams but we have to look at the things we have done wrong to rectify it going forward.
"I'd never once look at any teammate in my team and say they would chuck in the towel. Liverpool made the three substitutions with Jota, Salah and Thiago, who are world class players and they caught us trying to play football in the wrong areas.
"You never want to lose a game, and you certainly never want to lose a game by that margin. We are always trying to do the positive thing and the right thing is to try and play our game the way we can but there is risk to that and they capitalised on it. We will learn from it and it'll only make us stronger."
All focus now turns back to the Premiership with the Ibrox men trailing rivals Celtic by two points at the summit.
The Light Blues travel to Fir Park to face Motherwell on Sunday, and the captain says the squad now must lift themselves. They will go into the game with further injury concerns with Connor Goldson forced off against Liverpool and pictured on crutches at the end of the match. Ryan Jack also hobbled off just before the hour mark.
He continued: "Any defeat at this club is a hard one to take, the benefit is we have a game around the corner in the league and we are coming off the back of two strong league performances.
"It is about brushing ourselves down and getting this out of our system which we are definitely going to do. If you look at the Champions League defeats that we have had, we have always come back in the league and put in a good performance. The Champions League is a great bonus for us as players and as a club, we obviously want to do our best in it, but our main focus is the league and domestic cups.
"We know what it takes and we know what we demand from each other and we will continue to do that."
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