Rangers are in danger of disgrace and this mystifying retrograde isn't for every team - Keith Jackson's big match verdict

From potential history makers to pitiful no-hopers.

Not every team can make such a mystifying, retrograde transition in such a short space of time. But Rangers managed it last night when they hit rock bottom in a one-horse outpost on the outskirts of Brussels, two months after storming all the way to the shoulder of immortality in Seville like some force of football nature.

If they thought they could rest on their laurels on the back of last season’s rampaging run across the continent in the Europa League, then now they know different. They face the minnows of Union Saint-Gilloise back at Ibrox next week in serious danger of disgracing themselves, not to mention costing their club a winning ticket for the Euro millions.

These Union players, let’s not forget, were a side that had never played a Euro tie before. Rangers, on the other hand, just looked like one. But it was the Belgians who took a 2-0 lead into the second leg largely because they came up against a Rangers side – and manager for that matter – who forgot how they are supposed to function in a quite mind-boggling manner.

Of course, there is time to repair the damage. But don’t take that for granted either after the lesson from history dished out this time last summer by Malmo. Once again, there is a danger of this team being swept out of the Champions League along with all the rest of the Euro trash which is tossed to one side to clear the stage for the serious business to begin.

And let’s be in no doubt either. Rangers and Giovanni van Bronckhorst got exactly what they deserved last night.

If truth be told, van Bronckhorst adopted a back foot approach from the very start of this catastrophic first leg. When it started to go wrong he was then spooked into