RANGERS coach Dick Advocaat last night made it clear that he had always taken the CIS Insurance League Cup seriously, and would always try to play his best side in the tournament.
Ironically, injuries mean that he will miss many of his first-choice players going into tonight's game against Aberdeen, but as Advocaat said, being able to field a side with eight internationalists and a youth internationalist in it: ''was not that bad.''
There has been a long-standing misconception that Advocaat was dismissive of the tournament, something denied by the coach, who said his only public utterances on it in the past came at a time when his club was playing a high number of games in a short period of time.
From a players perspective, Barry Nicholson, who will start tonight's game, made it clear the Ibrox outfit wanted to win the tournament. ''People have said that as we are in Europe, we are not going to take the competition seriously,'' he said. ''However, the way the players look at it is that if we don't win it, Celtic will win it, and we don't want that so the players will be up for it as well.''
Rangers captain Lorenzo Amoruso has also gone out of his way to lend his support to the competition, and said despite the fact that it no longer gives the winning team a place in Europe, it was, in his view, still an important tournament.
Going into the game, Advocaat has a long list of casualties which include Craig Moore, Sergio Porrini, Claudio Reyna, Dariusz Adamczuk, Jorg Albertz, Gabriel Amato, Rod Wallace, and Colin Hendry, who has undergone a minor operation on a knee.
The Rangers coach said he was resigned to the fact that at some stage during the season, and after so many games in a short period of time, his club would be hit by injuries, but such a high toll at this stage will make unpleasant reading for him.
The only slight bright spot for him is that long-term injury victim Daniel Prodan, who has been out for one-and-a-half years, is on the road to recovery, but just when he will return to the first team remains to be seen, while a decision will be taken on whether goalkeeper Stefan Klos' wrist injury has cleared up will be made later on this week. ''We have doubts over
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