STEVEN Gerrard last night praised his Rangers players for their efforts in Europe this season after their agonising defeat to Rapid Vienna - and insisted the Ibrox club will “come again”.

A goal by Dejan Ljubicic six minutes from the end of regulation time in the Allianz Stadium meant the Glasgow club lost 1-0 and failed to progress to the knockout rounds of the Europa League.

Gerrard admitted his side’s failure to beat Spartak Moscow, who finished bottom of Group G after losing to Villarreal, at home back in October had proved costly in their bid to reach the last 32 of the competition.

However, the Liverpool and England great stressed he was proud of his charges, who came through four qualifying rounds to reach the group stages, and insisted they would recover from the setback once he had improved his squad further.

“I thought we were good for 80 minutes,” he said. “I can’t really ask the players to give any more from what we had available tonight. We gave an almighty effort.

“Obviously as the game was getting to the final stages we were trying to roll the dice and be more adventurous to try and create something, create that moment we needed at 0-0.

"Unfortunately, we’ve conceded a counter-attack. But it’s very hard for me to criticise the players for what they gave.

“I felt like we played very well for large parts of the game. The players deserve incredible praise for taking this group to the wire. I believe if we were full strength tonight and we had everyone available the situation might have been a little bit easier."

Gerrard added: “I think once we analyse the whole journey we will certainly take ourselves back to Moscow at home, 0-0, a couple of chances we missed. We’ll take ourselves back to Moscow away when we scored a perfectly good goal (that was disallowed).

“We will also analyse our individual mistakes within it. We could have put ourselves in a better position tonight. But it wasn’t to be. I think if you analyse the whole journey the players have done fantastically well, but the reality is that at this level we fell a bit short. It’s my job to try and address that.

“But what I will say is we will come again. We will come again. It’s important now that we get back to winning ways domestically and we focus domestically now to put ourselves in a position to come back again.

“The idea now is to park the Europa League and really focus on the league. I think we have had a tough week and I think the support we’ve had in during that tough week has been really good I think we owe the fans a reaction on Sunday.”

Meanwhile, Gerrard revealed he will speak to Ovie Ejaria, the Liverpool loanee who didn’t travel to Austria amid speculation that he could be set to leave Rangers, about his future at the Hummel Training Centre today.

"I think it’s something I need to discuss with Ovie in the coming days," he said. "I had a chat with him a few days ago. He is slightly unsettled. Liverpool are aware of the situation and we are in dialogue with them.

"But the next time I speak to Ovie will be Friday, so we’ll have a conversation then and see where we go."

Asked if Rangers had missed Ejaria against Rapid, Gerrard said: "I think we missed all our good players that weren’t available. (Ryan) Kent, (Daniel) Candeias, Ejaria.

"It was nice to have Borna Barisic available. Going forward, if we can keep Tav (James Tavernier) and Borna on the pitch for a run of games, and try and get all our strongest players back, that will certainly help."