Ferencvaros vs Rangers preview: Hungary for Success
Another Thursday game for Rangers, an early kick-off this time.
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.
If you don’t want to receive Rangers or Celtic specific emails, you can ‘toggle’ off notifications from the “Rangers” or “Celtic” sections in your account settings, without having to unsubscribe from all emails.
If you would like to write about your team for www.ScottishFootball.info, please get in touch for a chat.
Good evening all, it’s another European game and another chance for me to welcome my readers from the Scotland’s Coefficient side of the house. All support and readership is massively appreciated.
What’s the point?
Beyond the obvious answer that I actually like seeing Rangers win games of football, most people probably wouldn’t be able to tell you if there’s much point in Rangers winning tomorrow’s game.
Qualification is certainly a touch more than unlikely at this stage, the table makes for grim reading.
If we are being honest, it’s almost certain that Rangers can’t qualify from their current position. Winning our last three games is a tall order, and even then there would be no guarantee.
A real depressing way to start things off, but for a shot of optimism, I’m looking at the stuttering form of GNK Dinamo and FC Basel and starting to dream, maybe we just need a few more slip ups from them and a perfect run from Rangers (and the teams between us not picking up anymore points).
The Green and White Enemy
To move away from the bigger picture, we can talk about tomorrow’s opponents.
That doesn’t make for much better reading.
Ferencvaros sit top of their league by 2 points after 16 games. More worryingly for Rangers though, they sit just 1 point off the top of the Europa League table. They are unbeaten and have 11 points after 5 games.
Unlike Rangers, they have plenty to play for and will be desperate to add another 3 points to their tally and get closer to cementing a place in the top 8. Remember Rangers did that last season? Great memories compared to now.
If there is a slight silver lining here, it’s that the home side have had a much easier fixture list than some of the teams around them.
Both Plzeň and Fenerbahçe have fallen to Rangers’ sword recently. So it’s curious that those two fixtures were drawn by the Hungarians. The three wins aren’t against poor teams by any means (we’ve all seen Genk play after all) but it’s not the glittering fixture list of a team punching above their weight and sinking the big hitters in the competition.
The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted that the side from Budapest favour a three at the back shape. I can’t tell if the back three is back in vogue or I’m experiencing a frequency illusion since Danny Röhl started deploying the shape at Rangers.
I’ve not had alot of time to do the kind of in-depth research I normally do for the European previews. So I apologise!
There’s a recognisable name in midfield in the form of Naby Keita. The former Liverpool and Leipzig midfielder is a very technical player and although he hasn’t played as many minutes as he would have liked this season, there’s no doubting his quality.
The name on the home fans lips will be Barnabás Varga. The striker is prolific and has notched 20 goals in each of his last three seasons, and is already on 19 in this campaign.
He has three goals in five Europa League games this season and there’s a good chance he will be licking his lips looking at our occasionally leaky defence.
I’ve been suggesting we match up with teams that employ a back three. But it’s very clear that our manager isn’t interested in adopting that shape while he’s missing centre backs.
Under Robbie Keane, Ferencvaros have become a formidable team. Their domestic form isn’t a surprise but the European results are very impressive.
At home they will have no fear, and they shouldn’t. We’ve seen this team wilt in intimidating atmosphere, and that’s exactly what we can expect in Budapest.
A Boon?
From the Rangers perspective, there was some positive news on the squad front. Mohammed Diomande (not involved tomorrow due to suspension) has not been called up by the Ivory Coast national team for the African Cup of Nations.
There’s no denying that Diomande has had some mixed form this season. But we aren’t in a position to be turning down any bodies at the moment.
You’d suspect that with his 2 goals the other night that Bojan Miovski will keep his place. We’ve finally found a way to get him more involved and there’s no point in disrupting that momentum.
Him getting his first European goal for Rangers would be a great way to continue that improvement and momentum.
Tomorrow will be a different challenge for the Macedonian though. I don’t expect us to have much of the ball so our number 28 will be tasked with maximising his impact with the ball when he does have it.
I was impressed by the number of touches and his involvement on Saturday. That has to continue for this game. It goes without saying that we will need him to be prolific when the chances arrive at his feet.
Part of me thinks that the manager will go for Aarons over Meghoma for this game. Aarons is the slightly more senior of the two left sided options, and I think is slightly more defensively astute than Meghoma. Although there isn’t much in it. My worry with that selection is that it means we have a fullback who will look to turn backwards with the ball, on a night when we won’t have many opportunities to get forward.
A player who may come in from the start is Mikey Moore. He showed on Saturday exactly the sort of impact that we wanted when we signed the Englishman on loan.
Much like our game at Easter Road, a tough European away fixture is the kind of scenario that we will require Moore’s ability to carry the ball forward under pressure. The 17-year-old will want to take risks and drive at goal when he can, but tomorrow is when the manager might ask him to be more conservative to allow the team to breathe a little.
Raskin and Barron will have a lot of responsibility too, we will be asking them to hold the ball under significant pressure, cover a lot of ground, and look to play forward when they can. Raskin has been quietly improving his form in recent games, Barron has been a constant source of energy in the midfield. I think they are up to the task.
Aside from that, there’s not too much more to say. I hope we can improve and get a win, but it’s a big ask given the current European form.