Stirling Albion boss Darren Young praises side for sterling performance at Ibrox

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Stirling Albion manager Darren Young couldn’t hide his pride despite the Scottish Cup fourth-round defeat at Ibrox on Friday night.The Binos held out for half an hour before eventually going down 4-0 to Rangers, whose goals came from debutant Alex Lowry, a James Tavernier penalty, Cedric Itten and Fashion Sakala.The crowd of 37,916 included around 800 Albion supporters for what was only the second meeting of the clubs in the Scottish Cup, with Rangers having won the first 1-0 in 1978.Stirling had drawn 0-0 on their last visit to Ibrox in March 2013 and earned a famous 1-0 victory at Forthbank in October 2012 but those matches were in the Third Division.Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s team are top of the cinch Premiership and are undefeated since the Dutchman took over from Steven Gerrard in November.Young said: “I’m delighted with the attitude of the players and the performance they gave us.

The fitness levels were great and the shape of the team was really good. It was a poor first goal to lose but we stuck at it and the big thing for me was the level they played at – we need to take that into our league games when obviously we won’t be pinned back like that.“They have set a standard and the communication and the organisation was good.

We had a couple of half-chances in the first half and two or three towards the end – big Dylan Mackin did well when he came on and it was a great strike to force a save.

We never folded and it’s great experience for the players to play here and against that quality.“I thought the first penalty was very soft because the ball just bounced up and hit an arm but the second was a stonewaller and it was a great save from Blair.