Rangers manager Walter Smith refused to be drawn into any mind games with Dan Petrescu ahead of Wednesday night's Champions League clash after the Unirea boss claimed his own players were unlikely to pick up any more points in the competition.
The former Chelsea star revealed how he made a bet with his players they would be unable to follow up their impressive 4-1 victory at Ibrox with another win over the Scottish champions in Bucharest. He attempted to play down his side's chances by claiming Romanian teams simply do not have the mentality to build on positive results.
"I hope that's the case," Smith smiled.
"We want to try and win the game and that's all that matters to us.
"We have to show the way we played in the last game wasn't typical of our performances. Certainly, we played better in the other two games than we did in that game at Ibrox."
Rangers currently prop up Group G with just a single point from their opening match in Stuttgart, with 4-1 defeats against both Sevilla and Unirea leaving them in a precarious position.
Defeat in Bucharest would spell the end of Rangers' hopes of qualifying for the knockout stages and, for that reason, Smith refused to look beyond Wednesday night's match.
He said: "We were asked at the end of the last game how we felt about qualifying and, after the way we played in the last game, we can't look any further than this game.
"To take something from this game will be vitally important for us and we will attempt to do that and it will have to be a far better performance than in the previous match."
Comment 1 - 18 of 18
dirty bas, tards at th shame game yet again..no doubt all english fans in romania!
Point 15, it would be too hard to find an englishman in the epl as its full of everybody but english. Also how many english national players are actually english? Most if not all were born elsewhere. Typical inbread country you have there. Go to birmingham and you would think you were in jamaica
Rangers played well 2nite. More than can be said for ceptic in europe
what a useless bunch of TURDS, come down south and watch some brilliant ENGLISHMEN play fantastic football, when will you half wits ever learn?
point9 2nd last in your list should read loyd,or is that just the owners?
point 9 coz she's giving the whole of romania a bj when your sh ite team get humped
kick ma balls i'm mental and i don't give a fu ck.
I'm surprised Rankers can still afford the airfare
Point 1! U nuts? Rangers/TSB have a hell of a lot more money than the paper boys and window cleaners of Uneria!!!
C'mon the rangers you can do this. Mcgregor, whittaker, little, weir, smith, davis, mcculloch, naismith, lafferty, boyd, miller
# 5 ??????
need to play more than one up front though if not cant see gers getting all 3 pts
CSS...what the @#$% has my mum got to do with this
Your mother is watching Stuart!!
wattie keep yur gob shut LOL
C,MON THE BEARS,SURELY WE CANT PLAY AS BAD AS THAT AGAIN.POSITVE THINKING LETS GO FOR IT WE,VE NO CHOICE.I WOULD RATHER GET BEAT GOING FOR IT,THAN SITTING BACK. I KNOW WERE SHORT ON TALENT AND SCOTTISH FOOTBALL IS NOT GREAT AT THE MOMENT BUT LETS GET AN ATTACKING SIDE ON,THE WAY WE USED TO PLAY.GET SOME PRIDE BACK LADS AND PLAY FOR THE JERSEY,YOU CAN DO IT,JUST BELEIVE.
Yeah good luck Rangers
Lets face it guys. We aint got the money and the players to compete in Europe. I'm not expecting much from tonight, but good luck guys anyway!!!!
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