MARK Warburton tasted his first defeat as Rangers manager then insisted the third round loss to St Johnstone doesn't prove that there is a gulf in class between the Ladbrokes Premiership and Championship. The Perth side's deserved 3-1 win in Govan came after the Ibrox side had reeled off 11 straight victories and will puncture some of the hype about how this Rangers side would fare in the top flight. Warburton didn't spare his side when it came to the sloppiness of their defending but he insisted it would have been a different game if they had been more clinical in the final third.
Asked if the gap between the divisions is bigger than he first thought, Warburton said: "Honestly I don’t. That’s not a disrespectful answer. We got beat 3-1. But in the second half we scored a goal and hit the bar. If we scored a second goal it’s a different game. But I don’t think the gap is as wide, as I said earlier. We made mistakes tonight and we were punished, simple as that. We've made mistakes before and we got away with it.
"We weren’t getting carried away within the walls of our changing room, far from it," he added. "Any level you move up they have better players. They showed pace and quality and all credit to St Johnstone they came with a game plan and they stuck to it and they got their rewards for it. But last season, at my old club, we had one bad half of football early in the season and we referred back to that all season. That could be our first half here.
"We had to show more quality in the final third at times. But we can’t give away goals of that nature. We knew what we wanted to do to stop the counter and we didn’t do it. One ball and bit of pace beats us for the third goal and that can’t happen. The players know that. They are an honest group and we’ll work on it."
"I’m not too bothered about gulfs or comparisons between the Championship and the Premiership," said a jubilant Tommy Wright, whose canny game plan was carried out to perfection. "We played a very good side. Even at 3-0 they came at us, they didn’t stop applying pressure. But we limited them to only a few clear-cut chances. People write us off all the time. It’s water off a duck’s back for us."
Michael O'Halloran, who scored the killer third goal just after half time and was a thorn in Ibrox flesh all night, said he always felt the Saints would present a more difficult challenge than that faced by Rangers on league duty. Ironically, Ally McCoist's side had actually beaten St Johnstone here in the same competition last October. "I don't think they have really been tested, there are a lot of teams we feel give them a lot of respect," he said. "Obviously we were aware of them but we knew if we played our game we could go out and hurt them."
James Tavernier, who scored a fine goal just after the hour mark, which Rangers were unable to build on, was another staying positive last night. “I don’t think there was a massive gap," he said. "It’s only going to make us stronger."
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