It stings but once Rangers pain wears off it could spare them a repeat of my agonising bus journey - Barry Ferguson

They'll still be stinging a bit today.

The truth is it hurts to be knocked out of European competition and especially when you’ve got so close to a place in the quarter finals. Deep down these Rangers players will feel they could have gone further in this season’s Europa League and that they had more than enough to beat Benfica at Ibrox on Thursday night, having drawn the first leg in Lisbon.

So, yes. It stings. I wouldn’t even try to pretend otherwise. But what I would say is that, once the pain wears off, they might look back on this disappointment as the moment they dodged a bullet. If I’m being honest, Rangers were unlikely to win the competition when the likes of Liverpool and Leverkusen were in Friday's draw for the last eight. One of them is sitting at the top of England’s top flight and the other is storming towards the Bundesliga title in Germany. And, if Rangers had come against either of them, it would almost certainly have been a bridge too far.

Don’t get me wrong. Not for a minute am I suggesting that my old club shouldn’t be aiming for the stars with ambitions to reach another final. Give Philippe Clement another 12 months and two more transfer windows and then, this time next year, they might very well be in a position to make a serious challenge at that level in the latter stages.

But let’s be realistic right now because it was only six months ago, when I saw Aberdeen turn Rangers over at Ibrox, that I wouldn’t have put a fiver on them beating Brechin, never mind Benfica. At that stage in the season I was genuinely worried that Rangers might not be good enough to finish second in the Premiership because the team was in a terrible state. Confidence was at rock bottom and I saw a group of players who didn’t