Rangers midfielder John Lundstram relishes Champions League challenge
John Lundstram is relishing the opportunity to play in the Champions League again as Rangers look for redemption after a disappointing European campaign last season.
The Gers get their European campaign up and running with the first leg of their qualifier against Swiss side Servette on Wednesday (9 August) and the midfielder believes this is an opportunity to right the wrongs of last season’s European failure.
Rangers managed to reach the group stages of the competition last year under Giovanni Van Bronkhurst but were comfortably beaten by Napoli, Ajax and Liverpool as they finished bottom of their group and Lundstram is hoping to do better this season.
Speaking in Rangers’ pre-match press conference, via the Glasgow Times (9 August), he said: “It’s not nice when you don’t perform to the level you know you’re capable of and have shown. We know we can do better. So hopefully this year, if we can progress into the group stages we can put on a better performance.
“But of course that’s distant. We’ve hopefully got four games until that point so we can cross that bridge when we come to it. We just want to come through [the Servette] match in the best place possible and then go forward.”
Work to be done
The magnitude of the two-legs against Servette has not been lost on Lundstram or the rest of the Rangers players, quite honestly this is a game that although so early in the season, could be definitive for the remainder of the campaign.
Rangers should be a Champions League presence, especially having invested like they have so far this summer, with huge acquisitions of the likes of Danilo and Cyriel Dessers, anything short of making the group stage will be deemed not good enough.
But to be a success on the blue side of Glasgow, you have to embrace that challenge rather than run from it. A game of this magnitude gives you the opportunity to be a hero, rather than the platform to only fail if you come up short.
If all the players inside Michael Beale’s changing room are heading into the match against Servette with a similar combative attitude as Lundstram, it will serve them well on the pitch and will likely relight the excitement in the Ibrox crowd.
No matter what, the Rangers fans deserve to see more than they did in the terrible 1-0 defeat to Kilmarnock on the opening day.
In other Rangers news, one pundit has questioned whether the Light Blues will need to sign a replacement for Fashion Sakala this summer