MICHAEL Tidser believes Morton can take great pride from their performance against Rangers at Ibrox on Sunday afternoon — and use the disappointment to spur them on in the hunt for a play-off place.

Ton went down fighting in Glasgow at the weekend after a closely contested 2-1 defeat to the Light Blues in the William Hill Scottish Cup fifth round tie.

Tidser says they were gutted to come away from Ibrox with a defeat after putting so much into the game throughout the 90 minutes. 

He told the Tele: “It was definitely a disappointing result, considering what we put into it. 

“But I think we came and gave a good account of ourselves and we’re gutted at the end, truth be told.

“We came to try and frustrate Rangers, which we did do at times. 

“We wanted to get a goal and see how they would react and while it’s a shame that we couldn’t get through into the next round, that’s football.”

“We can, I think, take a lot of positives, and now we’ll just need to try and concentrate on the league and we’ll try and finish in the play-offs come the end of the season.”

Tidser cracked in a wonder strike from outside the box after just seven minutes to stun the Ibrox faithful and give Ton a 1-0 lead.

But that lead only lasted six minutes before veteran forward Kenny Miller drilled home a deflected equaliser and Martyn Waghorn nicked the winner in the second half.

And whilst the 27-year-old thoroughly enjoyed his goal, he admits it would have been even more special if it had meant knocking out the Glasgow giants.

He said: “Personally I was really happy to score a goal, but listen, the important thing unfortunately is that we couldn’t get through.”

Ton had their chances to win the game, or at the very least take Gers back to Cappielow for a replay. 

Aidan Nesbitt blew a huge opportunity with the score at 1-1 after Tidser had played him in, and fellow Celtic loanee Luke Donnelly also missed a terrific chance in the dying seconds of the game.

Tidser admits those two moments were vital.

He added: “We spoke about [the missed chances] at the end of the game. 

“It’s those chances that, if you take them, the game changes. And I always knew we would get a couple more chances. 

“We are bitterly disappointed, but we are respectful and congratulations to Rangers who move on.

“We understand that we played well and we knew if we could come and frustrate them, which we did at times, and while it’s a disappointment, we can take a lot of positives from the game into our league campaign.”