Rangers: What’s gone wrong for Derek McInnes and his side?
McInnes insists that, despite millions spent on nine additions to his squad already this summer, they are still short of the necessary quality. "The club is built for the Champions League and Europa League, but...
McInnes insists that, despite millions spent on nine additions to his squad already this summer, they are still short of the necessary quality.
"The club is built for the Champions League and Europa League, but I don't think the team is ready for it and it pains me to say it," he said.
"We need to get more quality, we need to get more confidence into the team.
"That is the job I came into Rangers to do. Rangers finishing third last season, what was served up wasn't good enough. We have to get things moving in the right way quickly.
"Jagiellonia are a decent team with some good players and I think they're well coached, but Rangers at their best should be winning this."
McInnes thinks it is a continuation of the problems experienced at the end of last season - the inability to deliver a 90-minute performance.
Asked about the team being booed off at the end, he said: "I think it was justified, to be honest. What we served up in the second half was not good enough.
"In the four games we've had, there's been some good moments, but it's not been good enough and certainly not a strong enough 90-minute performance.
"It is not great to watch. My team go from some good highs in the first half to being as poor as we were in the second half and you have to say we didn't do enough."
Thursday's defeat - which drops Rangers into a Conference League play-off against Czechs Jablonec - comes on the back of the nightmare news Youssef Chermiti was ruled out with a long-term knee injury just after Rangers rejected a big-money bid for the 22-year-old.
It means Rangers have had to set their sights on recruiting a new striker in addition to the wingers and defenders McInnes had already targeted. He says the club are "working so hard to get the necessary type of players", with PSV Eindhoven winger Couhaib Driouech set to be the latest arrival.
Halliday thinks the squad "shouldn't be that imbalanced this late into the transfer window" and reckons they need "three centre-halves, one left-back, two, arguably, three wingers".
"But the current squad that's available should be enough to beat Dundee United, it should be enough to beat Hibs and, to be honest, it should be enough to beat Jagiellonia Bialystok," he said.
Rangers were obviously hoping reuniting McInnes with Lawrence Shankland would be a winning formula after they went so close to wrenching the title away from Celtic while at Hearts last season.
However, former Rangers striker Steven Thompson thinks Shankland is already finding out the extra pressure he faces as the club's new captain.
"It's the weight of playing for Rangers, the weight of not having the start that he wanted, and the weight of taking a bad touch," he said.
"At previous clubs, if you take a bad touch and give it away, you might get a few pelters. Here tonight, when Lawrence Shankland's link-up play wasn't that good or he should've had a shot when he didn't, they are on you and it is going to take him a bit to get used to that I think. It's not physical, it's mental."