Rangers boss Steven Gerrard has said that his side have a lot of hard work ahead but he's more than satisfied to be topping their Europa League group.

The Ibrox side drew 0-0 at home to Spartak Moscow but were frustrated not to have capitalised on a number of good chances against the Russian side. The draw sees them level with Villarreal in the group but top on head-to-head having drawn in Spain on matchday one.

Gerrard said that had he been told he could be in that position when he arrived at Rangers in June, he would have gladly taken it, and then pointed out that the players' annoyance at not having been two points clear was a mark of how far they had come.

"The players are disappointed that they haven't taken maximum points," he said. "That's a positive for me. It does show how far we've come.

"We can't expect to win every single game. We can't expect to just blow teams away, especially teams of that calibre. They've made a change because they have standards and they expect to win and be consistent. It's because they've got big players who cost a lot of money and maybe haven't been hitting it off.

"I said before the game we had huge respect for Spartak. For us to dominate most of the game is very pleasing for me as a manager but we go away frustrated we didn't take maximum points because we wanted control of the group before we went away.

"Well, I would certainly have signed up for being top of the group at this stage. I would have signed up for that on day one. We've got five points alongside Villarreal. There's three games to go so a lot of hard work and a lot of challenges ahead.

"The job's become a little more difficult because we never got that breakthrough tonight. I understand that. But there's still loads of football to play and some really big games. I'm really excited looking forward."

Rangers created a number of opportunites to open the scoring, with Alfredo Morelos, Daniel Candeias and James Tavernier all having chances before Eros Grezda blazed a shot over the bar just on final whistle. Gerrard was happy with the chances created but frustrated that they couldn't find the cutting edge to settle the game.

"Just that final bit of magic or last bit of quality [was missing]," he said. "I think we did enough to marginally win the game, maybe, but I thought we played very well for the first 45 minutes.

"We lost control for 10 or 15 minutes in the second half. We kept winning the ball back and then instead of making passes we gave it back. Then we came back strong into the game for the final part.

"We always felt our fitness, in the final stages, might be the difference. We said to them at half time it was about creating that moment that gets us that breakthrough. We created that moment but we just couldn't finish it off."