Gio van Bronckhorst had no Rangers budget issues when they were dumping Dortmund and boss is playing a dangerous game

Eleven words. Spoken in less than five seconds.

“For us to compete with them, it’s too much to ask.” That’s a sentence potentially even more damaging than the 4-0 trouncing Gio van Bronckhorst ’s Rangers players had suffered against Ajax in the 90 minutes which had just finished. A second 4-0 drubbing in the space of four days.

But it was the manager’s choice of reasoning that will continue to reverberate round Ibrox and Scottish football for days, weeks and perhaps until the Light Blues prove they CAN put up a resistance against Europe’s big boys. Loose lips sink ships they say and if van Bronckhorst isn’t careful his Dutch debrief could soon mark the unravelling of his hard work in returning Rangers to the crest of the European wave. Supporters won’t accept it. Players lacking in bravery - and there were plenty of those in Amsterdam - will hide behind them. And who knows what the board made of it all?

Just 14 days earlier in the same country van Bronckhorst had hailed his side’s defeat of PSV Eindhoven and rightly boasted: “It is a very proud moment. I know what it means for the fans, for the club, to be playing in the highest level in Europe, competing with the best teams.” Yet a fortnight later the Ibrox boss was performing a perfect 180 when he uttered that 11 word soundbite that made eyebrows arch and jaws drop.

If it’s really too much to ask of Rangers to be competitive in the Champions League, what on earth was the point in qualifying for the big stage in the first place? Why were there celebrations after that impressive victory in Eindhoven - a PSV side by the way which had dismantled Ajax twice in cup finals in the last four months?

And how can the manager’s perspective change so dramatically in two