Rangers 0-0 Athletic Club: Hometown Hero

Morning everyone, Rangers battled to a well earned 0-0 first leg draw with Athletic Club De Bilbao at Ibrox last night.

Although on paper you'd always want to leave Ibrox with a lead going into a difficult away leg, the circumstances of the match meant that the result was much more respectable than it may initially seem.

Ahead of the game, Robin Propper and Ianis Hagi came into the line-up for the suspended Souttar and Diomande. The biggest shocks were just a second start of the season for Bailey Rice in place of Connor Barron and the return of Liam Kelly in nets, banishing Jack Butland to the bench.

Rice has looked promising in cameos this season, he's also been highly rated by those in the youth set-up for a long time. Bringing him in for such a big game was a really bold call by Barry Ferguson. Barron has been okay in his recent appearances in midfield, but clearly the manager feels he is one of the players who doesn't meet the standards he sets for the team.

Liam Kelly's reintroduction to the starting eleven has been a long time coming in my opinion. Aside from his penalty shootout heroics and a couple of good saves at Celtic Park, Butland has served up a mistake leading to a goal in virtually every game recently. Kelly didn't do anything wrong during his run in the team, he also massively improved our build-up by being happy to receive the ball under pressure compared to Butland shanking every back pass out of the stadium.

The game began cautiously, neither team were really willing to commit men towards an attacking move. As a result most attacks ended with an outnumbered attacker giving the ball up. We looked very vulnerable to turning the ball over ourselves though. A slack Sterling pass to Tav allowed Nico Williams to intercept and drive at the Rangers defence. That was a warning sign, it was not heeded.

A poor Robin Propper pass put Leon Balogun under pressure, forcing him to clear the ball forward. The Nigerian's clearance wasn't the cleanest and Athletic Club intercepted before playing the ball into Inaki Williams. The Ghanaian turned swiftly on the edge of the area, Propper tried to atone for his error by going to ground. His challenge caught the man and not the ball, the Dutchman was booked and we prepared to defend the free kick.

VAR then intervened and sent the referee to the monitor. Watching the tackle back you can see that there's no real argument against it being a red card. And as the incident was outside the box there was no double jeopardy rule to protect the defender. The referee made the dreaded box with his hands before upgrading the yellow to a red.

In just over 10 minutes the tie seemed to tip massively in the favour of Athletic Club. I wasn't sure how we'd respond, my mind immediately flashed back to Villarreal at home in 2018. That was a group stage match under Steven Gerrard's stewardship. It was much later in the half, but Rangers went down to ten after a second yellow card for Daniel Candeias. The second half was a fantastically committed defensive performance, the organisation was superb. Allan McGregor played in that game, so I wonder if that flashed into his mind too. We'd require an even bigger effort to travel to San Mames with a respectable result.

Despite the man deficit, there wasn't too much in the way of chances for the Basques to write home about. Ianis Hagi was especially fired up, it's probably the hardest I've ever seen him work in a Rangers shirt. The Romanian fought for every 50/50 and was happy to get back and help Ridvan against any threats to our left hand side. That really is the minimum standard but it was great to see nonetheless.

Towards the end of the first half we started to look a little bit leggy. Sannadi drew the first save of any note in the game from Liam Kelly with a snapshot in the area. Kelly caught the ball well from the resulting corner too.

The second half was much the same as the first, lots of Athletic Club possession with few clear chances to show for it thanks to the hard work and organisation of the Rangers team. Our use of the ball was poor throughout the game, it's to be expected in the circumstances but I worried that it might cost us in the long term.

There were two big points of interest in the second half. One was a very unfortunate and painful injury for Bailey Rice. He went down after a heavy impact from Sannadi. The distress of the referee and the players worried me. Thankfully he was able to clap the fans from the stretcher while being carried off. It seems like it might just be a broken cheekbone or something similar.

Athletic Club shuffled their pack by introducing Alex Berenguer. His impact was nearly immediately felt. A long ball found the Basque in behind Dujon Sterling, the ball fell to Guruzeta whose effort was saved well by Kelly before being finished by Berenguer. Replays revealed it was very obviously offside from the rebound as Berenguer was behind Kelly. VAR took an absurd amount of time to make that decision before deciding to award a penalty.

The decision was due to a handball by Dujon Sterling. The ball did touch his hand before making contact with Berenguer's foot. It was extremely harsh but the rules for UEFA competitions are very harsh, so the penalty was given. I felt sorry for the fans in the ground who will have had no idea of what was going on throughout the process.

Athletic Club's number 7 stepped up to take the penalty. Rory Hamilton mentioned on commentary that he had scored the winning penalty in the Copa Del Rey final last season. Clearly he wasn't facing Liam Kelly that day though. The penalty taker feinted and went down the middle. Kelly dived but like all good keepers, he kept his feet close to the centre to kick the penalty away.

The Rangers keeper was immediately swarmed by teammates. Deservedly so, what a moment for Liam Kelly. Psychologically the save was huge, it seemed to really take the steam out of Athletic Club.

Liam Kelly taking the plaudits from fans for his fantastic save at the end of the game

Most of the game passed without much incident aside from Dujon Sterling going off with injury with a few minutes to go of the 12 minutes added on. Given there was no concussion sub allowed for Bailey Rice, we had to finish the game with 9 men. But we managed it.

0-0 is really a great result given how the game went, but I'm under no illusions of how tough it will be to get a result in Bilbao. Let's look at the positives before worrying about next week.

In typical Rangers fashion, we managed to halt our 5 game losing streak at Ibrox by drawing against the best team we've played in that time. James Tavernier was absolutely superb 1v1 against one of the best young wingers in world football, not bad for a guy that can't defend.

Crucially, we saw a real blueprint for hampering the Basque teams attack and play in the final third. That will be much harder to implement away from home against a hostile home crowd. But it gives me far more hope for our ability to get a win away in Spain than I had previously.

As with every positive result under this management team, I hope it can be one of the building blocks for a good run of performances. But I've learned to temper that hope given our seeming inability to put two good games in a row together at the moment.

Aside from that, I hope everyone has a good Friday and Saturday before a difficult trip to Pittodrie to face a resurgent Dons side.