Club Brugge vs Rangers(agg 3-1) preview: All to Play For
Rangers have a mountain to climb in Bruges
This article was written for Scottishfootball.info by Adam Bortkiewicz, a Rangers fan and online sports writer, who has his own Rangers blog you can follow.
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Hello everyone, the time has arrived for us to discuss the prospect of Rangers playing football again, and we as fans having to witness that prospect.
Hamza Igamane, we hardly knew ye
Fresh from the news of his refusal to train this morning, it was announced this evening that Rangers have agreed the sale of Hamza Igamane to Lille for a fee of £10.5m. The news also seems to indicate that the fee matches a yet-to-be-disclosed release clause in the striker’s contract, reported to be €12m.
Given we were apparently holding out for a price of around £15m for the forward, Rangers either don’t know how release clauses work, or they are trying to leak some semi-positive press about the deal. I’d lean towards option 2.
And so, to Hamza.
Signed for around 1.8 million pounds from the lesser known African footballing market, there was a fair amount of skepticism around the Moroccan’s arrival. Although we certainly needed to sign another striker, it wasn’t really clear if the striker’s skill set would translate to Scottish Football. Eyebrows were further raised when it was revealed that the then 21-year-old was deemed to be below the physical levels required to play in Scotland.
As a result the striker missed the opening few weeks of the season. When he finally appeared off the bench briefly against Celtic and Dundee United, he showed glimpses of talent and the fans clamoured for more. His first start for Rangers at home to Hibernian represented a false start as he struggled to get into the game against the physical Hibs back-line.
That was the last time we saw him fade from a game though, following that start he grabbed the limelight in every short cameo in a team that was desperately lacking in consistency and entertainment value.
His first goal for the club came against FC Steaua Bucharest (set to take on Aberdeen for a spot in the Europa League on Thursday), rounding off a 4-0 drubbing of the Romanians with a fantastic low strike into the bottom corner.
A coolly taken brace in the South of France followed as we slapped OGC Nice around in their own backyard.
The demand for Igamane to be our first choice striker was reaching apoplectic levels at this stage of the season.
Those fan wishes were granted as Igamane was rewarded with a run in the team in the league. During that spell between December and the middle of January, Igamane scored some absolutely fantastic goals and continually got fans out of their seats with feats of skill that reminded us that football at it’s core is about kicking a ball around and having fun.
I don’t want to waste my time recounting all of his good goals, so I’ll just skip to his best.
With the scores locked at 2-2 at Celtic Park, and the home side seemingly in the ascendancy. Interim manager Barry Ferguson turned to Hamza Igamane off the bench to save the day for Rangers. Our number 29 answered the call, taking the ball down shrugging off the challenges of desperate Celtic defenders to hammer home an unsavable strike and secure all 3 points for Rangers.
Although the game itself was a dead rubber, the win was sweet, and silencing a stadium that was baying for a winning goal was even sweeter.
Sadly, either due to bad advice or poor decision making on his behalf, Igamane’s relationship with the club and fans has ended on bad terms.
However, he leaves having netted Rangers a very handsome profit and leaves behind a glittering highlight reel that I am sure to watch on many occasions, probably after a few jars.
A fresh take?
I don’t think there’s much point in me rehashing some of the chat from previous posts about the issues in this team and the challenge of facing a side like Club Brugge.
We’ve seen the challenge, we know the issues, we are 3-1 down going into the second leg for a reason after all.
But what if we changed things up? Not by shuffling the pack of players who like to forget that they’ve ever seen a football when they enter the pitch, but a slight shift in formation.
Russell Martin has chosen to change formation and deploy a 3 at the back on occasion, could we make that work here?
I’ve had a look at his Southampton team in the Championship playoff final to try and find out. That game was a 1-0 win over a swashbuckling Leeds side who many expected to sail through into the Premier League.
Joe Rothwell was on the bench for Southampton that day, while another Joe, Aribo, was starting in midfield (another great entertainer like Hamza).
The more I think about this set up, the more I like the idea. We need to look more resilient, and we have to maintain an attacking threat, I believe we have the players to make that happen.
We saw the best of John Souttar in a Rangers when playing a three, under Barry Ferguson last season. So I think he would look far more secure than he has so far this season. Djiga would be comfortable on the left, despite his recent shakiness, he is solid in possession and tends to look for a short pass inside anyway. Tavernier had a mini renaissance while playing as a wide centre back last season, he’s the obvious choice here, and his ability on the ball should help our central build up.
In midfield, I’ve aimed for balance and energy. I’ve been extremely disappointed in Mohammed Diomande’s performances this season, but he excelled alongside Raskin while playing in this kind of system, so hopefully it kick-starts his season. Lyall Cameron and Nicolas Raskin bring us legs and energy, I’d hope that they’d relish covering the ground and the space left by this set up.
Meghoma is the obvious choice at left wing back, as we have no one else. Oliver Antman is a more controversial choice given we have Max Aarons. Aarons represents the safer choice, he’s a right back by trade and is more defensively capable than Antman. But I actually think one of the things that’s stood out for me in the Finnish winger’s game, is that he is extremely intelligent when pressing and tracking back out of possession. For example, him winning the penalty against Viktoria Plzen on his debut, that started with him pressing and winning the ball in a defensive position. He also has fantastic energy and would have more space to run into if he was attacking from a slightly deeper position. It’s a gamble, but we kind of need to gamble right now.
Upfront, I’d noticed that Martin actually deployed David Brooks alongside Adam Armstrong in the Playoff final. Armstrong is your bog standard number 9, but David Brooks has spent his career playing as a winger or a number 10. His intelligent movement and happiness to drop into wide areas to support the wing backs was part of the reason Southampton looked so comfortable when building with the ball against a very good pressing team. Although substituted in the 35th minute, his replacement Samuel Edozie performed the same role, being a winger by trade himself.
My reading of this, is that Djeidi Gassama could potentially excel if given that same freedom to roam and support the team in forward areas.
I’m not a manager by any means, and it’s easy for me to put names on a team sheet and talk about it being a great idea, but I like to think I’ve explained my reasoning well. Plus this will all be irrelevant when we see the same 4-3-3 set up tomorrow!
Herculean effort
Tomorrow’s task is a tall order for Rangers. Our 3-2 aggregate win over Union St-Gilloise was our only comeback from 2 goals down in a European tie. And we are going away from home rather than welcoming the opposition to Ibrox tomorrow.
Do I believe that we can do it? Honestly, I don’t think there’s much belief in the tank right now at this club.
The coefficient is looking particularly bleak following Celtic’s rather embarrassing loss against Kairat Almaty this evening. However, I wouldn’t bet against us playing even worse tomorrow.
It’s a sad time when you can’t look forward to a big European away game as a football fan. But who can blame any Rangers fan for feeling that way at the moment.
Let’s hope I can be proven wrong and we can see a bit of fight in this team tomorrow, maybe that starts with a little formation change, Russell?