Walter Smith believes Rangers must make amends for their shocking defeat to Unirea Urziceni when they play host to Stuttgart in the Champions League on Tuesday night.

The last Group G match at Ibrox proved to be a disaster for the Scottish champions as they crashed to a humiliating 4-1 loss to little-known Romanians Unirea. The result also put a major dent in their hopes of qualifying for the knockout stages of the tournament, meaning the clash with Stuttgart is now a must-win game if Rangers are to retain any hope of progressing to the last 16.

"Our home performances have been disappointing and we have to show a good reaction to that problem," he said. "That's the main thing from our own point of view. We have to show that the Unirea game, especially, was a blip on our own part."

He added: "It was an exceptionally poor performance from us and we have to make up for that."

Back-to-back 4-1 defeats to Sevilla and Unirea at Ibrox do not make good reading so far and Smith is hoping for third time lucky in Glasgow against the Germans.

"It's a strange one," he said. "We've got a couple of points from two good performances away from home and we have had no points from our home games, which is an unusual circumstance for any team.

"We've had one exceptionally poor performance and one quite decent performance at home, although we lost quite heavily at the end of that.

"It's been a strange Champions League campaign. After four games we find ourselves with two points but still in a situation where we have an opportunity to qualify or, at least, get into a situation where we have European football after Christmas.

"That must be what we aim for and hopefully we can do that."