STEVEN GERRARD admits Rangers are now in must win territory in the Europa League after suffering a 1-0 defeat to Sparta Prague.

The champions are rooted to the bottom of Group A ahead of two huge back-to-back fixtures with Brondby in the coming weeks.

A Dávid Hancko header on the half hour mark was enough to condemn Rangers to a potentially costly loss as they failed to bounce back from the reverse at home to Lyon on matchday one.

Rangers - who saw midfielder Glen Kamara sent off in the second half for two bookable offences - have now lost five of their 15 competitive fixtures at home and abroad this term.

And Gerrard knows his side have left themselves with no margin for error on the continent as attentions turn to the top of the table clash with Hibernian this weekend.

Gerrard told RangersTV: "I’m disappointed with the scoreline obviously. 

"I’m disappointed that we’ve got off to the start that we have in the group. Losing two games is not ideal. 

"I think the next game is a must win now. We have to win the next game against Brondby to give ourselves an outside chance. 

"In terms of the performance, I thought Sparta maybe just edged it in terms of chances. 

"But I was really pleased with the boys, especially when we went to 10 men. 

"I felt we threw caution to the wind and tried our best to try and rescue a point. 

"It wasn’t to be and unfortunately we’ve lost the boxes tonight. 

"They’ve had one good chance off a set play which we’ll need to look at. 

"We’ve had two very similar chances and unfortunately we haven’t taken them. 

"I thought for large parts of the game that we passed the ball really well. We played with control. 

"I still think we can be better around the box in terms of variety and trying to open a team up. 

"Our keeper has been more busy than theirs. We have to admit that. 

"But when we went to 10 men we took more risks and played with more endeavour and desire. 

"I thought we created more and still looked like we could rescue a point. 

"Right until the death, we’d some good set piece opportunities but unfortunately we just couldn’t get that important goal to rescue a point."