Booby prizes should never be for Rangers and I fear players are unable to grasp golden rule – Kenny Miller

Rangers secured European football after Christmas on Thursday night.

But I’d be wary of singing that from the rooftops, given their performance against Aris Limassol. Sure, they’re guaranteed to have at least a Europa Conference League place. But is that where Rangers are at now? Being happy with a booby prize? When you play for this club you should never celebrate failure and that’s what the

Conference would be. Let’s be honest, when the groups were drawn the target would have been the top or at least second place. Obviously, that can still be achieved by getting a result over in Betis in two weeks’ time. But Thursday night definitely felt like a step backwards. At half-time, the fans were booing. They were losing 1-0 and had put in a poor performance.

There was a wee reaction after the equaliser but it just flattened out again. It was a bad result and only taking one point out of six against Aris is nowhere near good enough. Philippe Clement has made small improvements – but it’s only slight differences. The cohesion I spoke about in this column a couple of weeks ago still isn’t there. Was that performance any different from some of the worst we’ve seen earlier this season? Probably not. At Aberdeen last weekend, they played OK – but dropped points.

Against Hearts at Ibrox recently Rangers won in stoppage time and the manager referenced the team’s never-say-die attitude. He praised his side’s character and that’s fine. But they got away with murder that day. And talking about that resilience – does that mean on Sunday at Pittodrie they didn’t have it? Or on Thursday night?

Of course it doesn’t. It just means that, once again, this team couldn’t get the job done when they had to. And that’s the question mark still