Darche blow forces Smith into Euro rethink

Rangers have suffered a huge blow ahead of their Champions League clash against Lyon after Jean-Claude Darcheville was ruled out of the trip to France.

The striker limped out of today’s 1-1 Clydesdale Bank Premier League draw at Motherwell just 10 minutes after being thrown into the action at half-time.

A hamstring injury means he will now miss the vital European tie, as well as next weekend’s league match against Hibernian at Ibrox.

“He will miss Tuesday’s game and will probably be out for a couple of weeks,” confirmed manager Walter Smith.

“I would hope he would possibly be fit when we come back from the international break but he will miss the next two games at least. It’s not serious but it will mean he will miss those two games.”

Darcheville has been deployed in the lone striker role with great effect in all Rangers’ European matches and Smith admits he now faces a massive rethink ahead of their rendezvous with the French champions.

He added: “That would have been a situation we would have been looking forward to on Tuesday but we will now have to have another think about what to do.”

A Kris Boyd penalty allowed Rangers to salvage a point after Motherwell had taken the lead through Chris Porter but Smith does not expect events at Fir Park to have any bearing on their Champions League match.

“Champions League games are played in a totally different manner from that game out there today,” said Smith. “We have showed that we can handle both if we apply ourselves properly.

“We didn’t do that in the first half but we did it in the second half. While disappointed overall with our level of football, at least we applied a fair amount of pressure in the second half which from our point of view was more pleasing.”

He added: “You’ve got to give Motherwell a bit of credit for their first half performance. Motherwell played extremely well. You’ve got to credit the opposition at times and I don’t think we do that often enough.”

Referee Craig Thomson pointed to the spot when Darcheville’s replacement, DaMarcus Beasley, was felled by Keith Lasley but the post-match analysis was dominated by the two penalties he did not award.

Smith believes Rangers had a decent shout ignored when Boyd went to ground under pressure from Mark Reynolds, while Motherwell boss Mark McGhee insists David Clarkson was fouled by Steven Naismith when his side were still leading 1-0.

“I was disappointed we didn’t get another penalty,” said Smith. “I felt we had one before the one we got. It was very similar to the claim that Motherwell made.

“I don’t think there was any argument about the penalty that we did get.

“DaMarcus Beasley was about to cross the ball, contact was made and he went down. From our point of view, I felt it was the proper decision.”

McGhee said: “I’m satisfied with the result but we could have had more. We had a strong appeal for a penalty and we were disappointed that the referee didn’t feel it was a penalty.

“We needed two goals and that’s why the penalty claim was disappointing because that second goal might have seen us through.

“Their penalty was a stonewall penalty and we have no arguments about that one.”