Bougherra sees benefit of Oz tour

26 July 2010 07:47
Madjid Bougherra is confident Rangers' pre-season tour of Australia will prepare them well for their Champions League campaign.[LNB] Rangers opened their Sydney Festival of Football effort with a 2-1 victory over Blackburn on Sunday.[LNB]Walter Smith sent out his strongest available XI, and first-half goals from Maurice Edu and Kenny Miller earned the Scottish champions a win over Sam Allardyce's men.[LNB]With each goal worth a point, Rangers are three behind AEK Athens, who beat hosts Sydney 5-3 earlier in the day.[LNB]Algeria defender Bougherra was boosted by a victory over top-flight opposition from England and feels the following two games will prove just as valuable.[LNB]Bougherra, who played in an unfamiliar right-back role as minor injuries robbed Smith of Steven Whittaker and Sasa Papac, said: "It was good for us to win because we were playing against a Premier League team and I think we did well.[LNB]"Now we have two more games to play here against two teams - Sydney and AEK Athens - who play two different styles of football.[LNB]"It is good for us to be playing such different sides because it will help us to get ready for the Champions League.[LNB]"I think it is beneficial for us to go away to a place such as this and play different sorts of teams because it gives us a platform for the future."[LNB]Rangers dominated the first half and Miller missed a second-half penalty before David Dunn pulled one back from the spot to set up a nervous finish.[LNB]Smith told rangersfc.co.uk: "I'm pleased with the result and I think we played very well at the start of the game and in the first half especially.[LNB]"After the break, we only had a little spell in the middle where we kept reasonable possession of the ball and we showed little bits of tiredness.[LNB]"Of course, we could have gone 3-0 up but we're still pleased with how things went and we're delighted to get an outing like the one we had.[LNB]"Blackburn are very good at pinning teams back and they did that very well in the second half but we coped with it.[LNB]"We're getting up to a level of competitiveness we need - we had that today and hopefully the other games we play in will be very similar."

Source: Team_Talk