Steven Gerrard was sickened by a late Bayer Leverkusen sucker-punch as Rangers' Europa League dreams were dealt a hammer blow.

The Ibrox boss bemoaned Matt Polster 's failure to "take one for the team" and wipe out Leon Bailey before he curled in a decisive third to take full control of the Europa League last 16 tie.

Leverkusen leave Ibrox as firm favourites to progress to the quarter-final ahead of next Thursday's closed door second leg.

Gerrard felt his side competed for long periods but rued the American full-back's defending.

He told BT Sport: "At 2-1, you're still thinking it's not the end of the world, if we stay in their we might get a late equaliser.

"But we're extremely disappointed with the third. Polster's gone to ground, he's got to take the man down and take a yellow card for the team.

(Image: Getty Images)

"If he doesn't he's got to run all the way back. He actually gets back but he's got to do better in the 1v1.

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"It's going to be extremely tough, we knew it would be. They're a fantastic team, they've got quality players.

"We've got a very important game at the weekend we need to recover and get ready for that, we'll see where we are next week.

"We certainly won't give up. We'll keep going, keep fighting.

"We always knew we'd get to a stage and meet an opposition with high calibre players, and that we'd have to suffer at times. We did at moments in the game.

"But over the course of 90 minutes we still showed that we're capable of competing with this level of opposition which is a positive."

Rangers largely contained Peter Bosz' side in the early stages before VAR awarded a penalty against George Edmundson.

Kai Havertz rolled home the opener before Charles Aranguiz smashed in a classy second.

Edmundson pulled one back only for Bailey to put the game to bed in the closing stages.

And Gerrard admits his team showed the Germans too much respect before going behind.

He said: "I think the way the game panned out we had a real good shape about ourselves in the first half, but I wanted us to be a bit more front foot and a bit more aggressive.

"I thought we showed them a bit too much respect within our shape. Obviously the penalty is a blow for us.

"It is a penalty because VAR's there. Normally, if there's no VAR you might get away with that one, so it was a blow.

"Second half we were much better, a bit more aggressive and frontfoot, and we got our rewards from that.

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"We've actually gone and created some good chances. I think their second goal is class, it's a high quality finish.

"We've defended our box twice really well but you want that to drop to one of your players. It drops to one of theirs and he scores a fantastic goal."