While the door has yet to be closed on Rangers’ Champions League hopes, it is moving ever closer in that direction. If a draw with the upstarts who embarrassed them in Glasgow a fortnight earlier amounts to some kind of progress, it didn’t feel like it in Romania last night, where Walter Smith’s side needed all three points, and would have claimed them had it not been for a late equaliser.

The frustration was that, towards the end of a tense, finely-balanced match that could have gone either way, Lee McCulloch had given Rangers the lead. His long-range effort seemed to take the goalkeeper by surprise and, with an awkward bounce, it flew up and into the net.

They had waited a long time for that, which made Unirea Urziceni’s goal, with just two minutes left on the clock, all the harder for Rangers to bear. Marius Onofras, a first-half substitute who had troubled the Scottish champions all night, unleashed a shot that even he could have expected to fly past Allan McGregor with such gusto. It leaves Rangers with just two points, three fewer than Unirea. Add in a dose of crowd trouble among the travelling support, and there wasn’t much good news for the Ibrox club.

Apart from the anthem beforehand, it didn’t feel like a Champions League night. The Steaua Stadium, to which the match had been moved for its superior facilities, was a throwback to the bad old days of eastern Europe, uncovered on three sides, floodlights blazing through the drizzle. More Unirea fans than expected braved the elements, and over a thousand Scots, but it hardly passed for glamour.

It didn’t help when crowd trouble broke out at half-time. With yellow-bibbed stewards struggling to contain a disturbance in the away section, the sight of punches, and seats, being thrown was depressing. The public announcer even pleaded with fans to stop, warning that the match could be suspended, and that there would be serious consequences for Rangers.

It is probably not how 17-year-old Danny Wilson had anticipated making his Champions League debut. The young defender, who had played so well against Dundee in the Co-operative Insurance Cup, found himself partnering David Weir in the absence of the injured Madjid Bougherra.

And that wasn’t the only gamble taken by the Rangers manager, Walter Smith, who dared to go with a bolder system than has been his wont in Europe. McCulloch, returning from injury, played alongside Kevin Thomson in a defensive midfield partnership, with Steve Davis, Kyle Lafferty and Steven Naismith supporting the lone striker, Kenny Miller.

Uncharacteristic adventure on the visitors’ part had the desired effect in the opening stages, when a flurry of crosses were nodded goalwards — most notably by Naismith — but the Unirea coach, Dan Petrescu, soon cottoned on to his counterpart’s ruse and responded with an early substitution. The introduction of Onofras in less than half an hour triggered an alarming spell for Rangers in which McGregor had to be at his very best.

When the captain, Vasile Maftei, speared a long-range free kick towards the top corner, Rangers’ goalkeeper was alert enough to parry it wide. That, though, was nothing to his stop just a couple of minutes later, when he shot out a hand to push away Sorin Frunza’s deflected shot. Then Onofras tried to catch out McGregor with a lob from all of 40 yards, but his accuracy did not match his audacity.

By Rangers’ standards in Europe, it was an open game, sweeping back and forth. The visitors might have had the lead when Kyle Lafferty cut inside to curl a shot beyond the far post, and Miller showed some unusual footwork, beating two men on his way into the box. If only his left-foot shot, poked low to the goalkeeper’s right, had been a little firmer.

With so much at stake, the prospect of goals at either end made the game an increasingly tense affair. For all their ambition in the first half, Rangers knew that the loss of a goal could be fatal to their Champions League hopes, and it showed in their play. A mighty sigh of relief was breathed when Frunza tested McGregor from outside the box, and Seran Varga, the Unirea winger, seemed to sense their nerves as he showboated his way past Steven Whittaker with an array of step-overs.

Onofras, meanwhile, nearly snatched the goal his play merited, but his glancing header was saved. By the time McGregor was parrying a snapshot from the tightest of angles with 15 minutes left, it had turned into quite a night for the visiting goalkeeper.

The positive for Rangers, amid all this pressure, was the performance of Wilson. If there were doubts as to how he would handle the occasion, he answered most of them with a serene display at the back.

How Miller could have done with some of that composure when the best chance of the match fell to him midway through the second half. When Davis fed the ball through a ruck of players, Miller beat the offside trap, but not the goalkeeper, who was allowed to block what was a weak effort from six yards.

Unirea Urziceni (4-4-2): G Arlauskis — V Bordeanu, G Galamaz, V Maftei, P Brandán — T Balan (sub: M Onofras, 27), R Vilana (sub: R Paduretu, 82), I Apostol, S Varga (sub: A Semedo, 82) — S Frunza, M Bilasco. Substitutes not used: D Tudor, E Mehmedovic, S Paraschiv, E Nicu. Booked: Bilasco.

Rangers (4-2-3-1): A McGregor — S Whittaker, D Weir, D Wilson, S Papac — L McCulloch, K Thomson (sub: J Fleck, 85) — S Naismith, S Davis, K Lafferty — K Miller (sub: N Novo, 82). Substitutes not used: N Alexander, K Boyd, J Rothen, D Beasley, S Smith. Booked: Lafferty, Wilson.

Referee: C Bo Larsen (Denmark).