Rangers laboured to a 1-0 victory over Jablonec at Ibrox, with Ryan Naderi’s winner doing little to disguise a deeply unconvincing performance.
The night was summed up by Cammy Devlin’s extraordinary five-minute cameo, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him appearance that ended with a needless red card for a reckless lunge.
Devlin was brought to Rangers to add steel and experience, not to contribute to the mental fragility that undermined the club during last season’s run-in.
The dismissal could easily have cost Rangers the tie had Jablonec possessed any real attacking threat, but the Czech visitors were organised without ever truly testing the home side.
Jablonec were creative only in their theatrics and time-wasting, producing a level of dramatic swooning rarely witnessed outside a golden-era Hollywood studio.
Derek McInnes walked frantically about his technical area throughout, covering what must have been a remarkable step count across a deeply frustrating evening.
The manager is experienced and determined, but his team is not yet a smart team, failing to find space or drag defences out of shape in any coherent or sustained way.
It was a 12-course banquet of huff and puff, only briefly interrupted by the moment of coherent football that eventually led to Naderi’s decisive goal.
There were a handful of positives to take away, including industry from Djeidi Gassama and James Penrice, assured defending from Olwethu Makhanya, and signs of improvement from Naderi himself.
Emmanuel Fernandez endured another difficult evening, though there were moments when sympathy was warranted as he repeatedly found himself without forward options or runners to aim at.
Fernandez gestured at one point in apparent frustration, a waved arm that seemed to suggest he was not exactly overloaded with movement ahead of him.
The home support voiced their frustration at half-time, and while the final whistle passed without similar scenes, the atmosphere inside a stadium with 15,000 empty seats felt heavy and subdued.
Somewhere in America, owner Andrew Cavenagh will have been watching all of this unfold against a backdrop of enormous financial commitment and rising expectations.
Rangers have made close to 30 signings since Cavenagh’s consortium took over last summer, with transfer spending now knocking on the door of £50-£60m in total.
These are the players that investment has produced, largely pedestrian performers struggling to impose themselves at home against modest European opposition.
The contrast with Celtic is painful to consider, with Camilo Duran’s sustained class the night before a reminder of what coherent recruitment at a cost of around five to six million can look like.
The question hanging over Ibrox is where Rangers’ equivalent players are, their Callum McGregor, their Benjamin Nygren, their Kieran Tierney, their standard-setters and their driving forces.
Nico Raskin, meanwhile, sat unused on the bench amid swirling speculation linking him with Fenerbahce, though the club insisted a minor injury kept him out of the action.
Celtic’s potential £40m Champions League windfall next week only sharpens the urgency for Rangers to find answers and find them quickly under McInnes.
An hour after the final whistle, the only sound at Ibrox was the hum of three lawnmowers crossing the turf, a stillness that felt both eerie and loaded with meaning.
