Criticism of European results is over the top, insists Smith

Lisa Gray
RANGERS manager Walter Smith has defended the state of Scottish football and insists a run of poor results in Europe this season is nothing more than a blip.
Celtic's inability to reach the last 16 of the Champions League, or even achieve the consolation of Uefa Cup football following defeat to Danish side Aalborg in midweek, means there will be no representatives from north of the border on the continent beyond Christmas.

Failure to defeat Villarreal in their final group game will mean not a single win will have been registered by a Scottish club on the European stage this campaign – Scottish football's worst ever record.

Rangers contributed to that woeful statistic when they crashed to Lithuanian minnows FBK Kaunas in Champions League qualifying back in August – just a few months after reaching the Uefa Cup final.

But Smith feels the hysteria surrounding results from the Old Firm, Motherwell and Queen of the South outside domestic football over the last few months has been over the top.

He said: "I think we have a situation where my own club faced a real disappointment – probably one of my biggest disappointments career-wise – in the game against Kaunas.

"But we only have to look back five or six months when Celtic had qualified for the last 16 of the Champions League for the second year in a row before eventually losing to AC Milan, Aberdeen had qualified for the Uefa Cup and lost to Bayern Munich and we went on a run that took us to the final of the Uefa Cup.

"The national team was also at its highest level ever at that stage and everyone was saying everything in the garden was rosy.

"Now it's doom and gloom over a matter of months. I don't think it quite works like that.

"While it makes really good headlines and while other clubs, like ourselves, may be disappointed in the way they've played, I don't think it's a mirror image of football overall.

"Scottish football, historically at European level, has had ups and downs.

"I don't think we are a strong enough nation to gain major consistency and we never have been. Celtic reaching two European finals in the '60s and '70s is probably as consistent as we've been.

"We can't take away from the fact that we've not had good results and I can only comment on my own team's one, which was a bad one.

"But I don't agree that the football is as bad as everyone is making out and I don't think it was as great as they were making out a few months ago."

A gruelling fixture schedule both at home and abroad played a large part in Rangers falling at the final hurdle in the Clydesdale Bank Premier League title race last season.

Asked whether Celtic's exit from Europe will make wresting the championship from their grasp even more difficult, Smith smiled: "They are top of the league and they've been in Europe so it has been difficult enough!

"They are showing that they are champions and they have been holding their end up extremely well while they have been playing in Europe. So I don't see that it makes that much of a difference overall.

"To clarify, it wasn't just the European football that we had to play last season, it was the way the fixture backlog came so there were other aspects other than the European football."

Next up in the SPL is a Hearts side who are enjoying a decent run, while Rangers know they cannot afford the four-point deficit between themselves and Celtic to widen any further.

Smith said: "We had varying performances at Tynecastle last season.

"We turned in one of our poorest performances in the earliest part of the season and then a better one in the latter part of the season.

"I feel we'll need a really good performance tomorrow if we are to pick up anything.

"Hearts will be at their highest level of confidence for a while; they've won four games in a row and seem to be playing well. We'll have to be at the top of our game."

This was an assertion shared by Ibrox defender Madjid Bougherra, but the Algerian believes Celtic's elimination from European competition may make things harder for his side.

"This season is very, very hard because Celtic have won almost every game," he said.

"They are out of Europe and are concentrating only on the championship, the same as us. So we will see what will happen."

Taken from the Scotsman