Rangers manager Walter Smith has vowed to emulate his old friend Sir Alex Ferguson by guiding his side into a European final this week.Ferguson ensured an all-English Champions League showdown when his side scraped past Barcelona on a tense night at Old Trafford thanks to a superb Paul Scholes goal.

Now Smith is hoping the UEFA Cup final in Manchester will also have a British representative as Rangers attempt to overcome the final hurdle in an enduring European campaign.

Like United versus Barca, the semi-final first leg against Fiorentina at Ibrox ended goalless, meaning Rangers once again face the prospect of producing the goods on the road.

"To get to a European final is not just big, it's huge, especially for a team from one of the smaller countries," said Smith.

"When you've been lucky enough to have won a few things it's hard to choose but for any manager to get to a European final, it's an achievement. But I don't look at it as though it's any kind of personal thing, because I never expected to get there, to be quite honest with you.

"If we get there it'll be fantastic and I just hope that we can do it because there's been a great deal of effort to reach this stage and if we can win in Florence then we would deserve to get to the final because I think it would be a big enough achievement in its own right."

Rangers head into tonight's crunch tie in Florence's Artemio Franchi Stadium on the back of a defeat at Celtic Park that allowed their bitter rivals to blow the SPL title race wide open.

But Smith insisted: "I don't think that result will affect them (the players).

"They've had to get over disappointments this season and it hasn't affected them greatly.

"There's a great determination within the group to try to go on and win.

"We know the circumstances are difficult for us because of the short space of time between each of the games but when we get to this stage of the season we want to go on and turn a good position into a winning one."

Whether David Weir - who limped out of the action on Sunday with a groin strain - wins his fitness battle remains to be seen, while fellow casualties Lee McCulloch, Chris Burke and Charlie Adam made the trip to Italy for moral support rather than any hope of taking part in the action.

But Smith will be boosted by the return of skipper Barry Ferguson and Kevin Thomson, who were both banned for the first leg, and the Rangers boss hopes the midfield duo can make all the difference.

"We've missed Thomson in the games where he's been out and we've missed Barry as well," he said.

"They've been good for us in the games in Europe and they obviously help us retain the ball a bit better when they're both in the team so it's good to have them available to us."

Both teams are confident of scoring but a goalless match would, of course, see a place in the final decided by the lottery of a penalty shootout - a scenario Smith insists his players are comfortable with.

He said: "If that's the situation, we'll go into that quite happily.

"Fiorentina faced that in one of their previous rounds against Everton, so they have experience of it, too.

"But I think we'll need to score if we're going to go through so it won't be that different from other games we've played this season."

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