Dumbarton had started the match well getting balls into the box and could’ve been ahead when Mark Gilhaney’s cut back narrowly missed Colin Nish.

Shortly after Rangers were awarded a penalty but Dumbarton players and fans were lifted when Danny Rogers saved Lee McCulloch’s spot kick, that high was short lived as Kenny Miller scored a couple of minutes later and Murray was disappointed his side couldn’t keep the scores level for longer.

He said: “The penalty is given and we save it, we get out of jail a bit with that one, it’s 0-0 and you start to think that it could be your day.

“We had a chance before the penalty as well, but they hit us with that goal just after the penalty. It’s a great ball in and I told the players at half time that we can’t let players like that cross the ball because they will get on the end of it and we seen that again for the third goal where Boyd scores, so we need to try and sort that out for next week.” Murray was disappointed to lose but admitted he couldn’t fault his team and the gulf between the sides in terms of quality and resources ultimately told.

He said: “I thought we were excellent, it’s frustration not anger because these guys are on a different level of resources compared to us.

“The guys did their best and sometimes you just come up against an extra bit of quality and today Rangers quality shone through.” The Sons manager feels that this season in the Championship is a one-off in terms of the level of teams competing in the league, Rangers, Hearts and Hibs providing a sterner test than would normally be faced in the division.

He said: “This season is totally different from normal because that quality isn’t normally in this league, Hearts, Hibs and Rangers provide that. Some weeks you’ll get away with it and some weeks you won’t.

“Typically we’re used to an end to end game where teams battle for possession to get goals.”