STEVEN SMITH was pleased to see his Rangers under-18s progress to the Youth Cup semi-finals, but reckons his team have even more to give.
The coach reflected on this evening’s victory against Aberdeen and believes that the squad could’ve made it an even more comfortable win.
Speaking exclusively to RangersTV after this evening’s Youth Cup victory against Aberdeen. He said: “I thought that we were good in spells, we played Aberdeen last Friday in the league, so it was a game that we were expecting.
“I said to the lads after the game, I still feel that there’s more left and they know that as well. I think that’s a good feeling to have after going through to the semi final’s knowing that there is still more in the group.
“We felt that we could’ve made it more comfortable and controlled the game more, we felt that we let them come back into a little bit through scrappy set plays and gave them a bit of encouragement.
“We asked the boys that when the game does get to that situation, can they get more control, it’s something that we challenged them on, and they agreed. It shows me that they have a decent standard – I’m quite happy with that.
“We spoke to the boys about having the right mindset because we thought that the game last week [against Aberdeen] was relatively comfortable and that can sometimes make you feel like it’ll be like that the whole time.
“We told them to be prepared for the best Aberdeen team that they’ve faced this season so I think that they accepted that with that feeling that they still have more to give – credit to them that’s us through to the semi-finals and that was the main objective before the game.”
Smith added that the team will look forward to the next cup fixture when it comes but insists that they have important games before then.
He continued: “We’ll look forward to it [Semi final] when it comes, I think that the next fixture is Hibernian next week, so we know that we have another difficult one.
“One thing that we do have is options, we have a big squad, and we have everybody fit. We have numbers just now and quality as well, the players have to be really at it every single week to make sure you’re in the squad at the weekend.”