Mark Warburton: Rangers should have beaten Hibs in cup final - this is why we didn’t

Rangers should have beaten Hibs in the 2016 Scottish Cup final but were running on empty, according to Mark Warburton.

The former Ibrox boss claimed that injuries and suspensions “hurt” the Light Blues as they came from a goal down to lead 2-1 going into the last ten minutes, before succumbing to an 80th-minute goal from Anthony Stokes and David Gray’s 92nd-minute headed winner.

Warburton - who had loanee Dominic Ball suspended and named just five substitutes - was speaking to the Open Goal podcast about the showpiece game on May 21 2016.

When asked what went wrong at Hampden, Warburton said: “Honestly, we were a spent force. Dom Ball being suspended was a killer - we had no defensive midfielder, and asked Andy [Halliday] to play out of position. So that hurt us.

Mark Warburton believes Rangers should have beaten Hibs in the 2016 Scottish Cup final. Picture: SNS Group

“It sounds a bit naive to say it about a young loanee but Dom was an important member [of the squad].

“We only named five subs, because the likes of Tom Walsh, Ryan Hardie, Jordan Thompson had been out on loan - we couldn’t play them.

“So we were literally running on empty. We had injuries, just 16 fit players.

“If you remember, the press said ‘Warburton’s making a statement to the board that he doesn’t have enough players’.

“I wasn’t making any statement. We had no players left. None at all. The likes of Walsh and Hardie, I’d have put on the bench and brought off the bench.

“They’d come back from loans and couldn’t play. I literally couldn’t fill the bench.”

Warburton named back-up goalie Cammy Bell, Nicky Law, Nicky Clark, Dean Shiels and Liam Burt on the bench, with former Hibs midfielder Shiels coming on in the 63rd minute and Clark with 15 minutes remaining.

The former Brentford boss admitted that the defending for Hibs’ equalising and winning goals had been “poor” but insisted his players had nothing left in the tank.

“[It hurt] to come so close - to go 2-1 up, and to get to that point, eight minutes away from winning the cup - but had we gone further on [into extra time], there was nothing in the legs.

“Two late set-pieces, poor defending, and they hit us, and it really hurt us to lose that game. It’s a game we should have won. Whatever country you’re in, you want to win the main cup.”

Warburton, who won the Petrofac Training Cup with Rangers and secured promotion to the top flight by winning the Scottish Championship title, felt the absence of Ball was a big miss for the Light Blues.

“Losing Dom was a real body blow. He was so good in the semi-final and he had physicality. We had Barrie McKay, Jason Holt, smaller players. You play a team like Celtic or Hibs - they’ve got physicality.

“We played teams in the league, and they’d put ten men behind the ball, defend for 90 minutes - but they would get a corner or a free kick and that was it.

“We should have defended that goal better, we didn’t as a group of players and staff, and we got punished in the last five minutes. We should have won the game. We wanted to win the cup. 
“And the Celtic game, for me, became insignificant. Now, you can look back on it as a great game but at the time, what’s the point in beating Celtic if you’re going to lose the final?”

Warburton also pointed to the down time between the last league match and the cup final.

“The two-week gap [between the last league game and the final] was too long. We had to try and find a team to play. I took the boys down to Tottenham to play the Under-23s. But it’s too long,” he admitted.

“You want the last game on the Saturday, and the cup final on the following Saturday.”