'Not good enough': Balogun makes honest Rangers friendly ...

The Light Blues were without Jack Butland, Todd Cantwell, and Connor Goldson from their available squad, but despite that Philippe Clement still fielded a strong team at St Andrew's as the English Football League side commemorated the late Trevor Francis. 

Rangers found themselves two behind at the half-time break following an own goal and a clinical Alfie May strike. The large contingent of travelling Gers fans made their feelings clear upon the referee's whistle and Rangers did respond in a better fashion during the second 45 minutes. 

Rabbi Matondo came close to reducing the arrears before second half substitute Scott Wright done exactly that from a Cyriel Dessers flick-on. 

Dessers had an opportunity to level shortly after but his close range effort landed tamely into the Birmingham City goalkeepers gloves. 

That would be it for Rangers, who are now on a run of three straight defeats in pre-season, with Bundesliga giants, Union Berlin, to come. 

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Asked to summarise the performance, a raging Balogun told Rangers TV: "Not good enough, quite frankly. If we come here and we play the way we played in the first half then you seriously have to question yourself. 

"I don't want to get into panic mode or anything, but that's just a very honest assessment, there's not much to say other than it was not good enough. 

"I think in my second half we showed a bit more but still. 

"We can say Birmingham are a good side, they got relegated, I don't really care because when you play for Rangers you can't present yourself like that. That's just plain and simple.

"It's just after the final whistle, so I'm quite mad right now but I'm pretty sure there will be good things from the second half, even though right now it's hard to imagine. 

"But obviously we are still learning, we still have a lot of young players and a few new players in the team. There will be mistakes made, we made a lot today, and we just need to make sure, because there's ten days until the kick-off of the new season, that we eradicate them, and even throughout the season there will be mistakes but we have minimise them. We must make sure we don't make the kind of mistakes that we done today."

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At 36, Balogun is a senior member of the Light Blues squad and been through his fair share of pre-season campaigns. 

Even then, there can still be a curve ball thrown in the way. Much like he found today when his Rangers teammate and vice-captain, Connor Goldson, left the group to push through a transfer away from Ibrox, leading to his own playing time being increased at short notice. 

"I feel good," the former Nigerian internationalist said. "I don't think that I was supposed to play 90 minutes today but that felt pretty good apart from that little knock, there was nothing serious so that was fine. 

"I think there's a good sense in the group overall, but again like we've seen, we've still got work to do."