Defeat fails to sour McLeish's enthusiasm
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Your support makes all the difference.The Rangers manager Alex McLeish was pleased with his side's display despite watching them lose 3-2 to River Plate in a friendly in New Jersey on Saturday night.
Rangers fought their way back from 2-0 down to level with goals from Shota Arveladze and Lorenzo Amoruso at the Giants Stadium but the Argentinian champions hit the winner through Maximiliano Lopez.
Celso Ayala and Victor Zapata had put River Plate ahead in an entertaining encounter. Rangers finished with 10 men after Arthur Numan was sent off towards the end. Barry Ferguson and new signing Mikel Arteta were particularly impressive for the Scottish side and McLeish was pleased with the way the pair linked up.
"I thought Barry and Mikel were excellent," McLeish said. "River Plate's midfield was causing us problems early on, so we changed things about. Mikel moved further forward in the second half and I thought he had a fantastic game. His touch was there and he and Barry looked comfortable with each other."
Ayala opened the scoring after 17 minutes. Zapata added a second six minutes into the second half, but Arveladze responded by pulling one back on the hour.
Amoruso's free-kick restored parity on 77 minutes but Rangers were caught napping as Lopez scored the winner from the restart. There was no way back and Numan saw red in the dying moments for a tackle on the substitute Andres D'Allesandro.
In the Intertoto Cup second round, FC Zurich held out for a 0-0 draw in Estonia against Levadia Maardu on Saturday to earn themselves a 1-0 aggregate victory and a home tie with Aston Villa on Sunday.
Northern Ireland's Coleraine took the lead away to Troyes with a Jody Tolan goal but went down 2-1 on the night in France for a 4-2 aggregate loss.
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