Danilo on his Rangers Champions League dream as he backs ‘great striker’ Cyriel Dessers

Danilo admits it would be a DREAM to reach the Champions League with Rangers.

Michael Beale and his troops fly out to Switzerland later today hoping to book a spot in the play-off round of qualifying and move to within potentially just 180 minutes of reaching the lucrative group stage proper for the second season running. They know they will face one of PSV or Sturm Graz if they reach the next stage with the Dutch giants 4-1 up on aggregate.

The Light Blues jet out with a 2-1 lead after Ibrox strikes last week from skipper James Tavernier and striker Cyriel Dessers. New man Danilo is backing his fellow striker to come good and win over the boo boys. He’s struggled in the two Scottish Premiership outings so far against Kilmarnock and Livingston last time out. Danilo was on target in that big 4-0 win over David Martindale’s men at the weekend alongside fellow forward Sam Lammers as he turns his focus to Servette insisting ‘we need to take it step by step’.

The hitman said: “For me it would be a dream and I’m really looking forward to that. We have a great team and a really strong squad.

“It’s not guaranteed for Rangers to play in the Champions League but we’re going to do our best and hope we can come through.

“And I would be a really happy boy to be able to go to the Champions League. First we need to look at Servette and maybe another game. We need to take it step by step.”

On Dessers, he added: “It’s early in the day and we’re still getting to know each other.

“We still have to properly click together. But we’re getting there and day by day we’re putting in the work to get better and really understand each other’s movements. He’s a great striker and I’m really glad that we can play together and help each other.

“We make a lot of movements and we can help our midfielders too with our runs as it makes it really dangerous for defenders to defend against good strikers who are really looking for the goal.

“Last Wednesday he scored and on Saturday I scored and so did Sam Lammers so the coach is giving us a lot of freedom and now we want to show the people that we can do everything.”