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Louise Thomas
Editor
Philippe Clement was left ruing two early missed chances to “put fire in the stands” in Rangers’ “very harsh” 4-1 Europa League defeat to Lyon at Ibrox.
Skipper James Tavernier and wide-man Vaclav Cerny passed up good opportunities to give the home side the lead before 19-year-old Belgian Malick Fofana curled in the opener from 12 yards after 10 minutes.
Gers midfielder Tom Lawrence levelled in the 14th minute but two goals from captain Alexandre Lacazette before the break had the French side comfortably in front before Fofana tapped in a second in the 55th minute to add gloss to the scoreline.
“I think we started the game with good intentions, with good intensity, with good quality also,” said Clement who revealed Lawrence went off at the break with a hamstring injury which will likely keep him out of the Premiership game against St Johnstone on Sunday.
“To put fire in the stands, to have an amazing European evening, when you have two 100 per cent chances, the first two chances of the game, you need to kill them off to get a special European night.
“We did a lot of good things, but the goalkeeper made a really good save for the chance of Tav, but he could have put the ball also sideways, where we have two players totally free to tap the ball in, and Vaclav is also a tap-in to a free goal.
“So I don’t think we can do much more than creating those kind of chances, I don’t think you can create better chances than that, but you need to kill them off.
“Against teams with this quality, you don’t get so many chances, so that’s disappointing.
“And it’s also disappointing the way we got goals against with losing balls in the areas where we couldn’t lose the ball, and a few times not good defending in our aggression and in the one-against-ones against top players, as they’ve shown today.
“But 1-4 is a really harsh result, if you see. In the end, it’s the same amount of chances that both teams have, and we had more in the first half, but it was 1-3 with half-time, and that’s the difference in quality. So it’s a big working point for us.”
Clement explained why he replaced captain Tavernier with Neraysho Kasanwirjo when the score was 4-1 for the visitors.
He said: “Everybody can be replaced, and he has already played a lot of games, so not much to say about that.
“And Nana (Kasanwirjo) showed also last couple of weeks that he can be a really good replacement, and he’s defensively very solid, so those are normal things.
“Like on the other side, players were changed. We’re going to play more than 60 games this season, so it’s impossible to play all these games.”
PA
