Walter Smith has taken aim once more over the fixtures plight that his Rangers team finds itself in while approaching Wednesday’s Uefa Cup final against Zenit St Petersburg. The Rangers manager has also challenged those who talk of his team’s so-called “antifootball” to put his own rebuilding of the club in context.

Smith was speaking after his side’s 3-1 win over Dundee United on Saturday, a result which maintained Rangers’ pursuit of Celtic for the Clydesdale Bank Premier League title. While Craig Levein, the United manager, excoriated Mike McCurry, the Ibrox referee, Smith spoke of the exhaustion his players were now feeling as they chased their dream of winning four trophies this season.

“My players have been placed in a situation where they are playing their fourth game in nine days and their third league game in six days,” Smith said. “You can see the amount of work they are putting in, but this season is different from others because we are not playing on the same level playing field as the rest.”

In fact, Smith’s arithmetic isn’t quite right. At the weekend Rangers played their third league game in seven days, not six, and their fourth game in ten days, not nine, as Smith asserted.

Nonetheless, Rangers still face a congested end-of-season that continues to irk the Ibrox manager.

“What we want to do is try to enjoy this, and I felt that a weekend [off] would have given us a bit of respite, even psychologically, to then look forward to the game on Wednesday night,” Smith said. “But as we were robbed of that, we gave everyone the day off [yesterday] – their first day off in ages – and now we hope we can get everything ready for Wednesday.

“I’m proud of the way my team is handling the season but it’s like everything else – we’ve still got to win. We don’t want to be sitting later saying, ‘That was a good season’, but we never won. We’ve got to find a way to win, but as I say, we’re not playing on a level playing field.”

Smith also challenged those who have aimed barbs at Rangers’ style of play throughout the season to appreciate the job he has been trying to do in rebuilding the club from the shambles of last season. From Lionel Messi onwards, a host of opponents have rubbished the Rangers style as something of an eyesore.

“People have been quick to assess our level of football and say Rangers play ‘antifootball’ or ‘rubbish football’ or whatever,” Smith said. “But for those teams that have lost to us, if they are that good, then why have they not beaten us?

“Everybody seems to look at Rangers and the way they play. It’s mainly the opposition players who have made those comments; it has not really been the coaches, because they have more of an understanding of the situation.

But those players who have made these comments need to take a look at themselves.

“We play at a level that we are not given credit for. We have been put under a lot of pressure by a lot of teams who are better set than we are, who have been playing together for a number of seasons in European tournaments. So we have to take all that into consideration.”

Asked if his players, in fact, are galvanised by the criticism, Smith said that winning itself was his team’s greatest spur.

“The greatest motivation is to go and win. Other things are poor motivational tools. I feel we are being erred against in this situation but that is not our driving force. Our driving force is to try to win in all of the tournaments we’re still involved in.

“So far we’ve had a lot of negative comments about us. Hopefully, that will continue through to Thursday or Friday.”

Kevin Thomson, who limped out of Saturday’s match at Ibrox with an ankle knock, will be fit to start against Zenit on Wednesday.

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