This piece is an extract from yesterday's Rangers Insider newsletter, which is emailed out at 5pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Rangers Review team.

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“It's not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at”, said Ian Brown in the halcyon days of the Stone Roses but if we apply that phrase to Rangers and European football, right now the club is on the outside, ruefully looking in.

Just as the Madchester icons’ music lives on well past the peak of their powers, Brown alongside Squire, Mani and Reni retains a resonance and sense of meaning that will endure.

There is also a legacy of Rangers in the Europa League with similar qualities, nurtured by Steven Gerrard with Michael Beale at his side as the club was reborn on the continental stage, to the extent that immortality was within touching distance but ultimately elusive, under Van Bronckhorst in Seville.

That overall journey in Europe’s secondary club competition was four years in the making, a healthy diet of competitive, exciting football to invigorate from the often stale repetition of the Scottish game. Memorable tussles with the likes of Rapid Vienna, Porto and Feyenoord were only bettered by the scalps of last season, with Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig having no answer to the Rangers juggernaut in Europe, in the second half of the previous campaign.

A runaway train is a formidable force but eventually, it will come to a stop with the danger of implosion and that was what happened in the Champions League, earlier this season. The team and squad that had done so well over several campaigns was ill-equipped to make the step up to the top table and the outcome was painful. Rangers needed an injection of quality to have any chance in the Champions League but with the coaching staff and directors declaring satisfaction in the squad as it was, the club would collectively receive a humbling lesson.

This season’s European failure has to be weighed up against the inconsistencies of Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s Rangers, the injury debacle as well as the misfortune of drawing Liverpool and Napoli in Group A. The fine achievement of getting there in the first place having conquered PSV Eindhoven was soon overshadowed by Van Bronckhorst’s declaration that the club cannot compete after the heavy defeat against Ajax.

READ MORE: The Rangers reasoning which proves Beale was right on Tillman drama

He had a point in a different context but that double Dutch did not add up. Further ignominy was to come with the end result of zero points gained, having scored just two goals and conceding 22. The less said of the finer detail, the better.

Michael Beale reflected last week on his own perspective of Rangers Euro woes this season, prior to his Ibrox return: “When you look at the group that went on the long journey through Europe these past few years and you see that the vast majority of them didn’t play in the Champions League this season then it’s not really a surprise to me that the group struggled. The team had built up huge confidence over a number of years in the Europa League.

“If you start taking four or five of those out of the team because of injury and different circumstances then the new boys coming in didn’t live that journey.

“So it’s important we remember and respect what we did and cleverly evolve. It’s not rapid.

You don’t go out with the old and in with the new. It doesn’t work. I think you have to phase it in and at the right time.”

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Beale’s claim has merit but he will know that further evolution of his team and an increase in quality will be required if forward steps are to be made next season, domestically as well as on foreign soil.

He too will have the chance to secure Champions League football but it can’t be to just make up the numbers, like this season. Rangers have to be at least competitive with a shot of landing the third spot in the group and the Europa League parachute. That will soon be removed with the changing landscape of European football to commence from the season after next and with it, comes the paradox of what Rangers want to be or can be in Europe.

Pride at the top table in the Champions League or pragmatism in the competitive zone of the Europa League? That is a debate that will rumble on, but when the action gets underway again this week, Rangers won’t be at the party at all.

Michael Beale’s challenge is to make his team adored, once again.