'We caused our own issues' - Rangers star makes 'different approach' admission after heavy Lyon loss
The Rangers goalkeeper felt his team mates caused their own problems during the 4-1 defeat to Lyon
Jack Butland has conceded his Rangers team mates caused their own problems after they were taught a harsh lesson by ruthless Lyon in a heavy 4-1 Europa League defeat at Ibrox.
Philippe Clement’s side were undone by the clinical French outfit and were guilty of gifting their Ligue 1 opponents too many opportunities that were duly punished on matchday two of the competition on Thursday night. Doubles for Malick Fofana and Alexandre Lacazette rendered Tom Lawrence’s brief equaliser a consolation on a night to forget for the Glasgow giants.
And goalkeeper Butland, who ended the match with the captain’s armband after James Tavernier was replaced on the hour mark, has suggested a different approach was needed in key moments as he cited several factors that prevented them from nullifying Lyon’s attacking threat.
Reflecting on the 90 minutes, Butland told TNT Sports: “A really good team, they have got some serious individual quality. The disappointment for us is that we gave them too many easy opportunities for them to showcase that.
“It’s one of those you wish you could do it over again because I think we’d have a... you hate to say it, but a different approach that we needed or there wasn’t enough quite from us in those moments to cut out the attack, make a foul, stop them getting into their stride. So the disappointment is the fact we gave them some easy opportunities to showcase some serious individual talent.
“In that sense, it feels like a result that probably looks worse than it is but we caused our own issues. We allowed it (the game) to be a little bit to end-to-end. At home, we want to put the pressure on and make teams feel it which I think we did. The atmosphere was brilliant and we put them under some real pressure early on.
“They weren’t allowed to play it out from the back as much as they wanted and there were things that we managed to get them stressing about. But we didn’t kill that and didn’t allow it to stay that way by taking some good chances that we created to put ourselves up in the game, to equalise. In the end you start to give away opportunities and it gets away from you.
“There’s some factors that we really could have done better and we need to learn from but certainly a lot of encouragement as well that we sort of almost did it to ourselves. There was a lot of hunger, eagerness to do the right things but perhaps we just needed a bit more savviness at times to make the game more difficult, take the sting out of it and reduce them to break their rhythm a bit.”