Doug Ward

Thu 13 October 2022 8:10, UK

Rangers suffered humiliation at the hands of Liverpool on Wednesday night as they went down 7-1 at Ibrox to end any hope of going further in the Champions League.

The Light Blues were 1-0 up through Scott Arfield after 17 minutes and the game was level at 1-1 at half-time due to a Roberto Firmino equaliser.

But the floodgates opened after the break as Liverpool scored six more, with substitute Mohamed Salah grabbing three of them in six minutes to net the fastest-ever hat-trick in Champions League history.

The Daily Mail’s Dominic King wrote via the newspaper’s print edition [13 October, page 78] that Arfield’s goal was “wonderful” and “befitting a player of his class”. Jurgen Klopp was left in “disbelief” by Rangers going ahead as a “noise like thunder” echoed around Ibrox.

However, a “dreadful” goal was conceded when Roberto Firmino equalised and it had home fans “growling and howling” at the simplicity of it.

In his player ratings, King dishes out 4/10 ratings to James Tavernier, Leon King, Ben Davies and Borna Barisic with Rangers’ highest rating – 7/10 – going to Arfie.d

The Mirror’s Andy Dunn wrote that Rangers had the stuffing knocked out of them in the newspaper’s print edition [13 October, page 58].

He said that the Gers’ “collapse was remarkable” and pointed out that “Rangers have no-one in the Haaland mode” to cause any issues for Liverpool.

Weirdly, his player ratings saw Rangers players earn mostly 6/10s and 7/10s with James Tavernier the only 5/10 and Ryan Kent and Fashion Sakala bizarrely scoring seven.

According to The Express in their print edition [13 October, page 50] it was a “humiliation” for Rangers, who were the “unlucky ones” to be on the end of a reaction from Liverpool.

The Guardian [13 October, page 44] called the Gers “limited” and that it was “shocking to witness the extend of Rangers’ capitulation, which invited the inevitable question to manager, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, afterwards about mental weakness”.

Pathetic

We witnessed the most laughable, embarrassing and unacceptable 45 minutes of football in Rangers’ history on Wednesday night – especially in European football, anyway.

Liverpool are a better team than us and we didn’t expect to get anything other than a defeat against Jurgen Klopp’s side on Wednesday night.

But the manner if the defeat was sickening.

Six goals conceded in the second half – the players just gave up.

Liverpool’s finishing was good, in fairness, but the defence and midfield simply allowed their attackers to breeze through and have chance after chance.

We’re lost for words with Borna Barisic. He was an embarrassment – yet again – on the night while James Tavernier had an utter shocker on the right-hand side of the defence.

Ben Davies and Leon King were woeful after the break too with Connor Goldson’s first-half injury clearly having a major impact on the result.

There’s no excuse though and heads need to be banged together for that pitiful display.

In other Rangers news, Chris Sutton and Stan Collymore reacted to the result on Twitter on Wednesday night.