Rangers captain James Tavernier blasts disgraceful performance against Brann in 3-0 Europa League defeat

Rangers captain James Tavernier has laid into his team after their 3-0 defeat to Brann, saying he’s “raging” over a “disgraceful” performance.

The Premiership side sit bottom of the Europa League table after a 3-0 defeat away to the lowest-ranked side in the competition. In what was new head coach Danny Rohl’s first game in charge, the team fell to their sixth consecutive European defeat, showing many of the same failings that have led to a dismal start to the season.

Tavernier made no excuses, instead suggesting some players weren’t responding to what was being said in the dressing room and were failing to fight for the team.

“It’s just a disgraceful performance, it’s as simple as that,” the club captain said. “In all the years I’ve been here, you know, with the consistency of poor performance that we’re putting in, I’ve not experienced it before.

“Some of us show our aggression after the games, after we get beat. You expect all the lads to take that in. But individually, we all have to look at ourselves much, much harder because it’s not good enough.

“You can get instructions from managers, but we simply have to put that on the pitch. We were just second-best. Be it first ball, second balls, there was just not enough fight.

“And I shouldn’t be saying that for a player of a club like Rangers. That should be the given.

“You should want to fight, to go for every ball. Even if it’s a scrappy game, you’ve got to make it a scrappy game, but it’s just far too easy at this minute playing against us, and that’s the hurtful thing about this all.”

Tavernier, who has been at Rangers since 2015, said he couldn’t recall a time when the team had been as consistently below what was required, and said he hoped the message would get through to his teammates that they need to dig deep to turn things around.

“I’m raging,” Tavernier said. “It’s the first time I’ve been in this position, being at this club, and the amount of consistent games were on a certain basic levels, we’ve not been performing.

“That’s what’s making me rage.

“The amount of chats that we’ve had after games, you want it to sink into the players’ heads. But it just isn’t at the minute, and that’s what I’m raging at.

“I hope they are all as angry as me. I’m obviously not in their heads, but I hope they are, because we need to fix this, and the only way we can do this is by everyone playing for the shirt, chipping in and giving them their all.”