Rangers vs AS Roma preview: Crossing the Rubicon
It's now or never for Rangers in the Europa League
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.
Rangers sit on 0 points after 3 Europa League games, there’s shades of the start to our Europa League campaign in Gerrard’s last season at the club. Can we hope for a similar turnaround?
The Ibrox Colosseum
Tomorrow’s game really represents the last chance saloon for Rangers. It really does feel like we are a gladiator thrown into the Colosseum in Rome.
We have nothing to lose, the crowd is baying for entertainment, and anything less than victory and we are dead in the sand.
Hopefully there’s anger in the squad after the manner of the defeat on Sunday. The manager needs to harness that and start building a siege mentality. This squad will need to fight and scrap for even the slightest sniff of a point, that is the hand we have been dealt and as such we will need a real “us against the world” outlook before things start to change.
It would have been great if we were playing someone other than Roma at Ibrox to try and make that happen. But you can’t write off games at this club, so this has to be seen as an opportunity to lay a marker down.
The Invading Force
Tomorrow’s opponents aren’t the dysfunctional side that we’ve seen in recent years, this is a team firing and full of confidence thanks to manager Gian Piero Gasperini (formerly of Atalanta).
If anyone watched Gasperini’s Atalanta side regularly, you will know that his teams are intense, play with a lot of rotations and aren’t afraid to take risks to break down teams.
Most will remember his team dismantling Liverpool at Anfield on the way to their Europa League win over Bayer Leverkusen in 2024. He knows how to get his teams playing football.
Curiously, his Roma side aren’t quite as exciting on paper, in the league they’ve only won one match by more than a single goal and have been involved in games containing only one goal on 7 occasions (of 10 games played).
A quick look at some of these games will tell you that it’s profligacy in front of goal that’s holding the Romans back. They create a large amount of chances per game but consistently struggle to make these opportunities count. That’s slightly worrying, most teams who play like that just need a defensively insecure opponent to get things going…
System wise, the Italians deploy a variety of 3-at-the-back formations. Generally they maintain a very narrow front line and use the wing-backs to attack areas on the outside.
In terms of weaknesses, this is a team that have struggled against teams that have matched them up in formation terms and asked the side from the capital to think out of the box to score.
It may seem like I am talking down Roma overall, but they are currently embroiled in a brutal 4 way title race in Serie A. They are 4th on goal difference behind Milan and Inter, with champions Napoli leading the way by a single point.
From a Rangers perspective let’s hope that means Roma will have one eye on the league and may not prioritise the Europa League. Perhaps we could see some rotation.
Speaking of, in terms of personnel the jewel of the Roman crown is Paulo Dybala. Thankfully for us, he’s injured and no one knows when he will be back. They have some recognisable names and threats like Angeliño, Tsimikas, Leon Bailey, Dovbyk and Evan Ferguson (also injured).
The side has a similar makeup to Atalanta sides of previous years, a few recognisable names surrounded by a cast of hard working individuals who make things tick.
The Germanic Approach
So that’s what Rangers can expect from the opposition, and what will Danny Röhl do to try and make sure tomorrow is less the Battle of Alesia and more the Battle of Teutoburg Forest (one for the history buffs).
I expect that the manager will continue with the back 3. Matching up against a team that man-mark so aggressively is risky but can yield very positive results.
You have to ask players to be brave on and off the ball, when receiving the ball deep, players need to be moving into wide areas to create space to play into the forwards. This would be the perfect game for Tavernier to play in the back 3 in my opinion. Having the captain’s passing and ability to drive into space with the ball will be crucial for disrupting the Roman press.
I’d like to see a change in the front line as Danilo has been a bright spark and recent games, I’d like to see him start up-front with Gassama and Antman. Aasgaard should have some time to cool off from his silly red card. Aarons and Meghoma will have to be our wing-backs.
Diomande and Raskin should continue in midfield and we can only hope both are brave in terms of receiving the ball under pressure.
The manager could elect to select a more conservative midfield 3, but that would maybe require selecting Joe Rothwell, who should be nowhere near the starting eleven after his performance on Sunday. Although he may elect to play Connor Barron over Antman/Gassama to give us a more structured 3 in midfield.
Carpe Diem
Getting a result against a strong Roma side is a big ask for Rangers and Danny Röhl.
The big asks keep coming for the young German, and I hope he can keep the squad motivated in the midst of a really tough run of games.
Hopefully the positives from Sunday’s performance can be the focus going into this Europa League game. The Hibernian game feels like a long time ago, but that was as committed a defensive performance as you could hope to see.
This squad is not at the level required to compete, we’ve known that all season. But getting a little bit extra out of each player and trying to punch up will need to be our main goal for the rest of the season.
January will be important, but I think many are vastly overestimating what kind of surgery we can perform on this team.
The only thing I hope we can learn about this squad is whether or not they are willing to make a fight out of the rest of this season, there were positives on Sunday, but if the players down tools tomorrow night then we will really be in for a long long season.