Rangers: 'Mortified' Derek McInnes takes responsibility for European exit

Manager Derek McInnes says he take "full responsibility" for Rangers' "embarrassing" Conference League exit at the hands of Jablonec.

Rangers, who held a 1-0 lead going into the second leg of the play-off in Czech Republic, lost 4-3 on penalties on Thursday to crash out of Europe completely.

Derek McInnes' side actually led early in the shootout, only for Findlay Curtis and James Penrice to miss their final two penalties.

It leaves them without European football beyond August for the first time since the 2-1 aggregate defeat by Luxembourg's Progres Niederkorn in the Europa League first qualifying round in 2017.

And it ratchets up the pressure on McInnes after a hapless start to his reign at Ibrox, which included a Europa League exit against Jagiellonia Bialystok and a draw and defeat in their opening two Premiership games.

"I'm embarrassed with the performance," the Rangers manager said.

"The only people who represented the club well tonight were my staff and the supporters who were outstanding, getting behind the team despite watching what we all watched.

"I'm not going to make any excuses. Yes there's been a big turnover of players, yes we looked inexperienced at times but the responsibility is mine to make sure we're better than what we served up tonight.

"We're elite in everything we do in terms of preparation and the performance lacked in everything."

Rangers out of Europe after wretched penalty defeat in Jablonec

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The stats back up McInnes' anger. Rangers had just over 46% possession during the 120 minutes in the Czech Republic, and just one shot on target.

They won fewer than 70% of their 16 tackles and committed 17 fouls.

"I can't accept, and we shouldn't accept, losing individual battles, duels, second balls, not winning enough tackles and just getting the momentum of the game going our way," the former Hearts manager added.

"I thought we looked young, inexperienced at times. We're trying to make some signings to help with that side of it but we need to do so much more as a team.

"We got what we deserved. If we'd won on penalties we would have taken it, of course, but it would only have covered over the cracks.

"I'm mortified with the performance. I know you can lose games of football but we should have enough in the building to take care of that tonight."

Rangers had won their two previous games - a 5-1 win over St Mirren in the League Cup and the 1-0 victory against Jablonec at Ibrox - after drawing at Dundee United and losing at home to Hibernian in their opening two Premiership matches.

But McInnes feels this latest result may set them back.

"We went into this game scrambling for some sort of confidence, some positivity," he said. "But I just thought the team that deserved to go through went through tonight and that's hard for me to take."