JAMES Tavernier has apologised to supporters following Wednesday’s defeat to Liverpool in the UEFA Champions League.
The captain shared his disappointment following the match at Ibrox and insists the squad will continue to work hard to learn and improve moving forward.
The captain was unable to perform any postmatch media duties on Wednesday as he had been selected by UEFA for a random anti-doping test. Speaking to the media, he said: "We can only apologise, we never want to lose by that kind of scoreline to anybody. We worked so hard to get to this point but to concede seven at home in front of your fans is never good enough.
"We can take some positives out of the first 45 minutes but it is the Champions League, we are proud to be competing with these teams but we have to look at the things we have done wrong to rectify it going forward.
"I'd never once look at any teammate in my team and say they would chuck in the towel. Liverpool made the three substitutions with Jota, Salah and Thiago, who are world class players and they caught us trying to play football in the wrong areas.
"You never want to lose a game, and you certainly never want to lose a game by that margin. We are always trying to do the positive thing and the right thing is to try and play our game the way we can but there is risk to that and they capitalised on it. We will learn from it and it'll only make us stronger."
Tavernier says the squad must now lift themselves ahead of another important Scottish Premiership fixture away to Motherwell on Sunday.
He continued: "Any defeat at this club is a hard one to take, the benefit is we have a game around the corner in the league and we are coming off the back of two strong league performances.
"It is about brushing ourselves down and getting this out of our system which we are definitely going to do. If you look at the Champions League defeats that we have had, we have always come back in the league and put in a good performance. The Champions League is a great bonus for us as players and as a club, we obviously want to do our best in it, but our main focus is the league and domestic cups.
"We know what it takes and we know what we demand from each other and we will continue to do that."