Steven Davis was delighted with the way 10-man Rangers battled to a 3-1 win at Motherwell on Saturday and now turns his attention to this week’s keenly-awaited Europa League semi-final against RB Leipzig.
With one eye on the first leg in Germany on Thursday night, Gers boss Giovanni van Bronckhorst made eight changes for the cinch Premiership encounter at Fir Park.
The Govan men took the lead after 14 minutes – although it was unclear whether home keeper Liam Kelly had parried into his own net from a Connor Goldson header or whether Scott Wright got the last touch – before Ibrox defender Leon Balogun was shown a straight red card by referee Nick Walsh for an overly robust tackle on Dean Cornelius.
Well striker Ross Tierney levelled with a header in the 35th minute but Wright restored the Gers’ lead two minutes after the restart before skipper James Tavernier scored from the spot just after the hour mark for all three points.
Now the focus turns to Rangers’ first European semi-final in 14 years and after coming through another test in the league, 37-year-old midfielder Davis is putting no limits on progress in Europe.
He said: “It is going to be a really tough tie over the two legs.
“But we are in the semi-finals and really looking forward and hopefully we can go that one step further.
“We look forward to the games coming thick and fast and we move on to Thursday and focus on that.
“We were delighted to take the three points on Saturday. When you come away from home you always expect the first 10-15 minutes to be a bit frantic and that was certainly the case and then it settled down a bit.
“Amad (Diallo) had a good chance and then we got ourselves in front.
“We felt quite comfortable at that point then the game changed going down to 10 men but I felt we dealt with it really well, kept our shape well and always had that threat going forward with the pace we have in the wide areas.
“It was important to reset at half-time. The manager tweaked a couple of things and we started the second half well and that gave us a good foothold in the game and from then on we felt relatively comfortable.”
Well boss Graham Alexander was disappointed by the defeat but is determined to finish the season with a flourish.
He told Motherwell TV: “We have four games to go and we need to win as many points as we possibly can.
“We are still a great position to be in, in the top six, which a lot of other clubs would love to be in so we don’t want to get too down on everything.
“But in the aftermath of that result we have to look to see if we could we have done something better and 100 per cent in the second half we could have. We just had to replicate what we did in the first half.”
