Steven Gerrard pleased to see Rangers put on convincing show against Brondby

Posted Friday, October 22, 2021 by PA

Steven Gerrard was pleased to see Rangers put together a strong 90 minutes to beat Brondby 2-0 in their Europa League clash at Ibrox.

After opening Group A defeats to Lyon and Sparta Prague, the pressure was on the Scottish champions but they took the lead in the 18th minute when defender Leon Balogun headed in from a James Tavernier corner.

Striker Kemar Roofe added a second on the half-hour mark after his close-range finish was confirmed onside by VAR and the Scottish champions ultimately ran out deserved winners.

After beating Sparta Prague 4-3 away, French side Lyon have nine points from nine, Sparta are on four points with Rangers now on three ahead of the return game against Brondby on November 4.

“It is certainly up there if you look at the performance over the 90 minutes,” said Gerrard who revealed Balogun’s hamstring injury which forced him off will need to be assessed.

“I thought we deserved the victory, I thought we played with a lot of control and style, we could have maybe got another couple of goals.

“We have played really well for 45 minutes or 60 minutes but for some reason consistently we haven’t found that level where we are churning out 90 after 90 minutes so that is the most pleasing thing for me tonight.

“We stayed strong, we stayed aggressive in the right way and I thought we managed the game really well towards the end and the subs helped us do that, they brought us energy and quality.

“It kicstarts our Europa League journey.

“We put pressure on ourselves by not getting results in the first two games but we handled that tonight and now we have to replicate the results and performance in a couple of weeks’ time to give ourselves a better chance.”

Gerrard believes Rangers should have had a penalty when Joe Aribo went tumbling in the box in the second half.

He said: “Listen I am in favour of VAR and I think it will improve as we go along.

“I think tonight is the evidence that they don’t get everything perfectly right because they have missed a stonewall penalty.

“I think anyone who loves football, if you watch that. I thought at the time it was a penalty and now I have seen it four, five times, I am 100 per cent convinced it was a pen. VAR missed one unfortunately.”

Brondby boss Niels Frederiksen admitted his side were second best.

He said: “Rangers were the better team and deserved the win.

“If we were to get one point or three, we needed to score the chances and we had at least two big chances and we didn’t score and then it is difficult.”