“If anyone knew” – Super Eagles star conflicted about Rangers form

Super Eagles and Rangers defender, Leon Aderemi Balogun, has been slept conflicted by his side’s form domestically and in Europe, Soccernet.ng reports.

The Gers have a 3-1 lead over Fenerbahçe in the first leg of the UEFA Europa League round of sixteen after coming through tough fixtures in the Group phase.

However, domestically, Rangers struggle. The Record Scottish Champions are 16 points behind their rivals, Celtic, on the SPFL table, which wasn’t what they expected at the start of the season as they hoped to compete for the league title, but that hasn’t been the case.

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Balogun, whilst praising Rangers for the exploits they’ve achieved in Europe in recent years, could not find reasons for their domestic mishaps.

“If we or anyone knew, we probably would have fixed that problem. I think many factors came together this season, and we have to address that quite clearly at the end of the season because the situation domestically is the way it is. There’s no way to sugarcoat it; it’s bad. Therefore, it’s even nicer to have a game like Fenerbahce with the chance of going through to the next round,” the former Queens Park Rangers defender said in quotes revealed by the Daily Record.

With barely anything left to salvage domestically, the German-born Nigerian has urged the Rangers crowd to turn up on a big European night on Thursday, like they’ve done in previous years.

“The Ibrox factor is always massive for us, especially in those games. The European run when we got to the final, I think that’s what got us through many games.

“Leipzig, Dortmund, yeah, I’ll never forget those games for my whole life. If we perform well, the fans feed off us and we feed off them and that creates quite an intimidating environment.

“Even though I have to give credit to Fenerbahce. It’s quite intimidating over there, up there with the best I’ve witnessed. But we can be very confident going into the game based on the result we achieved over there, but we have to look at this game thinking we start from scratch and make sure that we see it through,” the 36-year-old defender concluded.

Rangers have been consistent in Europe for the last few years, becoming the only Scottish side to have secured an away win over the last 20 years following their victory in Turkey last week.