Pat Nevin hopes that Rangers don’t have to play in a cow field like he did for Scotland in Luxembourg

PAT NEVIN can vividly recall a bumpy night in Luxembourg when playing for Scotland.

So Rangers will hope for a smoother ride when they’re in Luxembourg on Tuesday night for the return leg of their Europa League clash.

Nevin played there in a European qualifier in December, 1987, as Scotland played out a 0-0 draw to end their Euro 88 campaign in ignominious fashion.

“That was an extraordinary game,” he recalls. “They weren’t great and we should have hammered them.

“But they got everybody behind the ball and we just didn’t look like scoring.

“It was like playing on a cow field. The grass was about three inches long! So I’d hope that Rangers won’t be playing on a similar pitch this time.

“Winning 1-0 at Ibrox doesn’t look that impressive, but in modern European terms, it’s a good result.

“The other team now needs to come out and Rangers are perfectly capable of scoring an away goal, whereas if it had been 1-1 in the first leg, they would quite happily have sat back.”

While Rangers’ result in the first leg was not what the fans were expecting from their new-look side, Nevin wasn’t overly surprised.

“Lack of match fitness is a huge leveller,” he says. “It normally takes three or four games to reach that level.

“You can run at the same pace for 90 minutes, but at first it hurts. When you can do it without thinking, that’s when you’re match fit.

“It affects the creative players most because they need to win the fitness battle against their opponents to then allow their skills to shine.

“Pedro Caixinha doesn’t yet know how well these players will do domestically, but they have to do it straight away in Europe. And he doesn’t yet know everything about them.

“Gordon Strachan’s first game for Celtic was away to Artmedia Bratislava when they lost 5-0 and that team went on to do well.

“But it’s bordering on the impossible for Scottish clubs in the Europa League and there’s no simple answer.

“Our standing means our sides are in the lower pots and they are coming against teams halfway through their season.

“You think of having a summer league but the latter rounds would then come in the off-season.

“We can’t win.”