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Lyon are masters of the house to leave Rangers seeing stars on miserable Europa League night at Ibrox

Lyon are masters of the house to leave Rangers seeing stars on miserable Europa League night at Ibrox

Just a couple of miles from Ibrox, Glasgow opened its doors to Les Miserables as the first of four showings went ahead at The Hydro.

Tickets will cost you a pretty penny to see the French musical masterpiece over these next few days, commanding the same lavish fees as many of the Lyon players who took centre stage in a 4-1 dismantling of Rangers.

Chief among them was Malick Fofana, the brilliant young Belgian winger who lit up this Europa League clash with his electric pace and trickery for the visitors.

Still only 19 years old, Fofana already looks like a leading man. On the night Les Mis came to town, it was thanks to Fofana that Rangers wound up feeling like the wretched and poor ones.

Working in tandem with Rayan Cherki on the opposite flank, Lyon’s two wing wizards tore Rangers apart at times in a scintillating display of attacking football.

It demonstrated a stark contrast between these two teams, with Rangers reliant on Vaclav Cerny and Nedim Bajrami to provide the threat from out wide.

Lyon are masters of the house to leave Rangers seeing stars on miserable Europa League night at Ibrox

Vaclav Cerny produced an astonishing miss when he blazed high over the bar from close range. 

Lyon winger  Rayan Cherki  was part of a scintillating attacking unit that took Rangers apart.

Lyon winger  Rayan Cherki  was part of a scintillating attacking unit that took Rangers apart.

Cyriel Dessers shows his frustration on a sobering night for Rangers in the Europa League.

Cyriel Dessers shows his frustration on a sobering night for Rangers in the Europa League. 

The game was not even 10 minutes old by the time Cerny had missed an open goal by blazing the ball high over the crossbar.

It was an astonishing miss from the Czech wide man and only added to the feeling that he has gone distinctly off the boil in recent weeks.

Cerny became embroiled in a bit of verbals with the Ibrox crowd in the win over Hibs last weekend. On the basis of this performance, the critics won’t have reduced in numbers.

Bajrami, meanwhile, made no appreciable impact on the other wing. The Albanian, who scored in the win against Malmo last week, was a passenger.

He looks like a player who, in the fullness of time, may end up playing more centrally in the No 10 role.

But therein lies the problem. Rangers are reliant on guys like Bajrami and loan signings like Cerny to try and do them a turn out wide.

This is still an imbalanced squad and a team short of genuine quality out wide. Philippe Clement will know this is a key area which will have to be addressed, whether in January or next summer.

Contrast that to the rapier thrust provided out wide in the Lyon team. In Fofana, they had the best player on the pitch, albeit Cherki wasn’t far behind. Such was the razor-sharp incision provided by Fofana from the left, the young Belgian really ought to have been wearing a surgeon’s mask and scrubs.

It became a sobering night for Rangers in the end, one which served as painful confirmation to Clement’s pre-match chatter about the financial gulf that exists between these clubs. The Rangers manager would have taken no pleasure from the fact that he was proven to be correct, his claim that Lyon exist in a different stratosphere looking prophetic come the end of 90 minutes.

The French side had almost £100million worth of talent sat on the bench, with Georges Mikautadze, Ernest Nuamah, Moussa Niakhate and Said Benrahma all waiting in reserve.

The fact they weren’t really needed owed much to the performance of Fofana, Cherki and Alexandre Lacazette.

Lyon’s holy trinity up front were an absolute joy to watch at times, playing with freedom and fluency to ease their team to victory.

Regular followers of French football will hark back to the Lyon teams of old and feel like this current crop may yet reach those heights if they can fulfil their potential.

Prior to the Qatari investment in Paris Saint-Germain, it was Lyon who were very much the dominant force in French football.

Back in the days of Paul Le Guen, they went on a run of winning seven straight domestic titles and became regulars in the latter stages of the Champions League.

Lyon haven’t won the league in France since the last of those seven titles back in 2008 and arrived in Glasgow very much a team in transition.

A summer splurge of around £120m has not yet been reflected in the Ligue 1 table, with Pierre Sage’s men currently languishing in 11th place.

But they looked in confident mood here, with the electric pace of Fofana featuringprominently down the left flank.

The game was paused briefly in the opening 10 minutes due to a pyro display and fireworks being let off in the Union Bears’ section of the Rangers support in the Copland Road Stand.

One of the fireworks exploded not all that far above the head of John Souttar. As sure as night follows day, a fine from UEFA will now inevitably be imposed.

Lyon have shipped 12 goals in six games in Ligue 1 so far this season and, in the first half, Rangers looked like they could expose those obvious defensive frailties.

But the game got away from them in a hurry. In a blur of deceptive brilliance on the left flank, Fofana had weaved his magic and scampered off into the night.

Clement and his side still have much to play for in this Europa League campaign. But this was a night when Lyon’s greater class shone through.

At no point was that more evident than when Lacazette absolutely lasered one into the top corner in the closing stages of the first half.

It was a finish which would have brought a smile to the face of even the most miserable of souls.


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