James Tavernier warns Rangers there's 'no time to mourn' UCL exit as he details ref explanation for red card

Rangers captain James Tavernier has told his team mates they can’t afford to dwell on their Champions League exit against Dynamo Kyiv - with the Ibrox side now dropping into the less lucrative Europa League for the second season running.

Philippe Clement’s side crashed out of Europe’s elite competition on Tuesday night after a 3-1 aggregate defeat to the Ukrainian outfit, who scored twice within two minutes in the closing stages at Hampden Park. Clinical strikes from Oleksandr Pikhalyonok and fellow substitute Nazar Voloshyn did the damage following the dismissal of Gers wing-back Jefte early in the second half.

Tavernier admits the result will be a difficult one to recover from - especially off the back of some questionable refereeing from Italian whistler Marco Guida. However, he reckons it’s important they dust themselves down quickly after missing out on a potential £40 million jackpot.

He said: “It’s obviously disappointing to not get the chance to go to the next round and try to play a third game to go into the Champions League. We’re still in Europe but the decision in the game changed the whole dynamic of the tie. We’’ obviously look back at this and we have to brush this off quickly because we’ve got another game at the weekend.

“There’s no time to mourn this. We’ll look at the lessons that we can take from it, then we’ll brush ourselves off and we’ve got to go again. We all wanted to send the fans home happy tonight and get into the play-off round. It’s small details in games that can have a massive impact. We’ll look back on it, look at how we played and be critical of ourselves obviously. But even with 10 men we tried to push as much as we could. But as we pushed towards the end, it left opportunities for them.

“I thought in the first half we weren’t clinical enough. We kept asking questions of them but with 10 men, it’s tough against 11. We gave it everything out on the pitch but it’s just disappointing for the lads that we couldn’t make it happen.”

Tavernier was left seeking an explanation from referee Guida after his controversial call to send off Jefte. The right-back was astonished by the decision to show the Brazilian a second yellow card following an innocuous aerial coming together. And the skipper couldn’t hide his anger, stating: “I spoke to him (the referee) as it happened and he tried to explain that it was an elbow in the face. Looking back at it during game time, Jefte got up really early and I didn’t even think it was a free-kick. There’s no malice at all in the challenge. It’s a 50/50 ball that’s going up in the air and Jefte gets up really early to beat him. I don’t know how much contact there is. But obviously the decision made a huge difference.”