Derek McInnes admits he was "embarrassed" by Rangers' performance against Jablonec this evening, and takes his share of the blame along with the players.
The Ibrox side are out of Europe altogether after crashing out of the Conference League on penalties to the Czech side. They offered very little and never looked like scoring, before falling behind to a 73rd minute strike.
McInnes says the only people who painted the club in a good light on the night were the fans and the staff, with the players failing to do their part but admitting that is ultimately his responsibility.
He said: "First of all, I’m embarrassed with the performance. I think the only people who represented the club well tonight were my staff, the support staff in the preparation. We do so much right here to get the players ready and in peak condition to go and perform.
"And the supporters, who to a man were outstanding, getting behind the team despite watching what we all watched. It wasn’t a good performance at any stretch of the imagination. Then you think you might just get through. It shouldn’t have come down to two boys, James Penrice and Findlay Curtis, in tears for missing a penalty kick. It shouldn’t have come down to that.
"I’m not going to sit here and make any excuses whatsoever. It wasn’t good enough. Yes, there’s been a big turnover of players. Yes, we looked very inexperienced at times. But the responsibility is mine to make sure that we are better than what we served up tonight. And we were miles short, miles short.
"I just feel as though we’re elite in everything we do in terms of the preparation, and the performance lacked everything, really, in terms of winning duels, winning second balls, looking after the ball, keeping things simple.
"We’d worked on trying to build in a five and trying to play on the outside of their really narrow front-four shape to try and press us. We wanted to be more progressive once we got into the wider areas. There were little, minimal signs of that in the first half. But our press wasn’t good enough. When the press was good and we went man for man, we weren’t strong enough in the challenges. We weren’t strong enough to win second balls. We didn’t win tackles.
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"I thought the opposition were better than us in most aspects of the game. So, we got what we deserved. If we’d won it on penalties, we’d have taken it, of course, because of how important that is. But we’d have covered over the cracks, to be honest. I’m mortified by the performance. I know you can lose games of football, but we should have enough in the building to take care of that tonight."
McInnes started in a 4-4-3 with the exact same XI that started the home leg, before making three subs at half-time and switching to a 4-4-2. There were further changes of shape during the second period.
The manager was asked for the reasoning behind that and whether he felt it left the team disjointed.
He added: "Well, I thought we went with the same shape for the first half, the whole of the first half, and it wasn’t good enough. So we had to do something. I actually thought we needed to take the anxiety out of it. I thought we needed a bit of experience on the pitch with Shankland, and I just thought we’d go with the two strikers, match up in midfield, and try to get a foothold in the game.
"At times, we maybe took the sting out of the game, but that’s fine and well. That’s only part of it. You’ve got to be proactive and do more with the ball when you get it. You have to say that I look at us now and I’m thinking, well, we’re no great as a possession-based team at the minute. We don’t look so comfortable with our work. We’re not a counter-attacking team enough, or effectively enough, at times. We don’t look like a team who are happy when we go direct. And teams need to be something.
"So, we tried to match up in the middle of the pitch because I thought we were losing that fight in there, and we needed to be the extra body in there. Towards the end, we brought the boy on and went 4-4-2 just to try and win the game in extra time. It’s my job to try and find the answers on the pitch because what was happening wasn’t working, and I was more than a bit disappointed with what was going on.
"But listen, I can accept us not being on point and playing well all the time, but I can’t accept - and we shouldn’t accept - losing individual battles, losing duels and second balls, not winning enough tackles, and not getting the momentum of the game going our way. Sometimes, in tight games, that’s what it takes to get us going.
"I thought we looked young tonight. I thought we looked inexperienced at times, and I thought we severely lacked in quality. Now, we’re obviously trying to make some signings to help with that side, but we need to be doing so much more as a team to perform better than we did tonight."
