Rangers FC should have taken a 10th minute lead vs Feyenoord in the Europa League on Thursday but James Tavernier failed to score from the spot.
The Gers were awarded a penalty and as usual, the reliable Tavernier stepped up to take the spot-kick. But instead of slotting the ball into the back of the net the defender hit the upright.
Thankfully though, Rangers did not have to wait much longer in order to get their goal as Sheyi Ojo put them in front in the 23rd minute courtesy of a fine long-range strike.
But after the match, there had been a number of whispers saying the manager is not pleased with James Tavernier after the captain missed the penalty and the defender might be stripped off that duty form the coming matches.
Gerrard though has come out to support James Tavernier saying he has no intentions of letting someone else take spot-kicks in the near future.
The manager told the club’s official website: “Tav has scored some really big penalties for us and he has scored some really big goals.
“He is the type of captain who provides big moments, and unfortunately, it wasn’t his night tonight and he got the penalty wrong.
“But, we stick with him and he has been huge for us.
“He helped us keep a clean sheet and I think Tav, even though he is quite old in terms of being late 20s, at this level, he is still inexperienced.
“He needs to just forget about situations and setbacks and move on and focus on his game. In the main, I am very pleased with James Tavernier – there is no getting away from that.”
During the 2018-19 season, James Tavernier played featured in 57 games across all competitions for Rangers and he ended the season scoring 17 goals out of which a large chunk came from the penalty spot.
So there’s absolutely no need to panic now that he has missed one spot-kick and we believe the manager was spot on to come out and publicly back James Tavernier since he most certainly would have been feeling a bit down after missing the sport-kick.
