John McGlynn hails Falkirk's 'best' Scottish Premiership performance as Bairns unlucky not to beat Rangers

John McGlynn hailed what he described as Falkirk’s best performance of Scottish Premiership season so far as they came from behind to draw 1-1 with embattled Rangers at home on Sunday.

The Bairns boss believes his side - who levelled through Henry Cartwright’s second-half stunner after Bojan Miovski’s opener just before the break - should have won the match after dominating for long spells. Outwith a short period prior to half time, Falkirk looked the more dangerous team with McGlynn’s three-man pairing of Calvin Miller, Ethan Williams and Kyrell Wilson causing havoc in behind Ross MacIver up top.

Leicester City loanee Cartwright finally levelled for the hosts with 17 minutes remaining when he outmuscled fellow substitute Mohamed Diamonde and let fly from range - with his effort leaving Jack Butland with no chance after it took a nick off John Souttar.

McGlynn hails Falkirk’s spirit

"There was a lot to like today,” McGlynn beamed. :I thought we started the game on fire, pressed really, really well, exactly what we wanted to do. The wingers were on fire. We know Rangers played on Thursday night in Austria and we knew we had to try and make a mark on the game and I thought we did that, we dominated for 30 minutes or so before we just probably ran out a little bit of steam. We let Rangers into the game and they got a little bit of footing and the goal that they scored, from their point of view, is a very, very good goal - it's very difficult to defend. 1-0 down at half-time, I was gutted for the players because they put so much into that but we had the spirit to come back and I'm delighted Henry (Cartwright) goes on and scores with an amazing strike. I think it's no more than we deserved over the whole 96 minutes. Maybe on another day, I think we've done enough to win the game. We were knocking on the door all day while Scott Bain wasn't too troubled. All in all, maybe we could've and maybe should've have got all three points.”

When asked if Falkirk’s overall performance was the best they’ve produced so far in the top flight, he added: “I think it would be. We did really well against Hibs also. We did well in the first game against Dundee United. We did well in a situation away to Aberdeen when we found ourselves playing against ten men. We’ve had great performances but been yo-yoing up and down. That's the challenge for us now - to deliver in our next game at Motherwell. A team that's playing particularly well and obviously went to Celtic Park and just lost out and scored twice. We’re looking for consistency. We've shown that we deserve to be here. If we play like that, we'll be a match for most teams.”

Bairns’ journey SPFL so special

Falkirk - now tenth in the SPFL’s top table after picking up a point - played out a 0-0 draw with Hamilton Accies in Scottish League One on this weekend just two years ago and proud McGlynn highlighted just how far the Bairns have come under his stewardship. That season, the team bounced back with an unbeaten title win after missing out on promotion the campaign previous with a Scottish Cup semi-final run saving the Bairns from moving to a part-time model.

“The club was at death’s door basically,” he said. “And barring a cup run and getting to the semi-final, then something would have happened because we needed that money to continue. All over the pitch, there are great examples: Liam Henderson was playing at Arbroath part-time not so long ago and today he went against X-amount of millons worth of attackers and dealt with them very well. There's loads of examples of where the club and the team and the players have evolved and came on. We've got young players that are developing too.”