Rangers vs KRC Genk preview: Pressure Cooker
It's Rangers first Europa League game of the season and they welcome KRC Genk to Ibrox.
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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Evening all, it’s time for Rangers to resume their European adventure. Let’s not worry about what happened last time, it certainly didn’t give me nightmares. We face a new challenge, although it’s also a Belgian team and I’ve heard they play similarly.
Ghosts of Clement Past
We face another club formerly managed by Philippe Clement in the form of KRC Genk.
My first encounter with Genk that I can remember was in 2011/12. They played Chelsea in the Champions League group stage, and much was made of the young team that played good football and managed to hold Chelsea to a score draw (although they lost 5-0 at Stamford Bridge, ouch).
If you look at the Genk lineup from that night there’s one name that stands out, Thomas Buffel. The former Rangers man joined Genk in 2009 and went on to play 388 times for the club until he departed in 2018.
Chelsea didn’t realise what an exciting talent they had in front of them though, and signed the number 14 instead. I wonder what happened to him?
Since that game, Genk have semi-regularly popped up in the early rounds of European competition. They haven’t been as consistent as Club Brugge, and in terms of their model they probably operate in the tier below our torturers from the previous round.
That’s matched up by the findings in
’s excellent piece on the Belgians. As always, I recommend reading if you want a truly in-depth look at the opposition, with no stone left un-turned.The main news about Genk, is that they are in turmoil, not unlike ourselves. They sit 14th in the Belgian Pro league after 8 games played. The noise from the club is that tomorrow’s game and the derby at the weekend are essentially win or bust for the head coach Thorsten Fink.
I’d love to say that means we are licking our lips looking at this fixture, but we are hardly in better nick ourselves. I won’t need to remind any Rangers fans that our win at the weekend was our first in any competition since playing Alloa Athletic in the previous round of the league cup.
Given the game is taking place at Ibrox, I expect the pressure will be more weighted against Russell Martin with a baying home support expecting nothing less than a win. And even then, a win won’t be enough to rescue Martin’s reputation. But I’ll have more to say about Rangers later.
In terms of playing style, there’s similarities to previous opponents Club Brugge, although thankfully not with the same quality of player. This is a team that isn’t a crazy high energy pressing team, they keep a strong shape and want to hold the ball when they can and exploit the spaces using overloads across the pitch.
It should be a challenge for them to come to Ibrox and command the ball like they would expect to do at home, but that relies on Rangers being firm and confident holding the ball themselves.
Our pressing shape will need massive improvement from what we witnessed against Club Brugge. The gaps that were left from chasing the ball and the opposition players were easily exploited at Ibrox and away. I’m not against us committing to a high press, this is a team that have less quality than Brugge, but if that’s our approach, it will need some structure.
In terms of players, there’s one standout that I’ll cover shortly. But it should be noted that they’ve lost several starters in the summer window, so this will be a team still trying to figure out the best successors for those roles. Given their league form, it doesn’t seem to be going well thus far.
The Anointed One
In the history of Greek Mythology there have been many young heroes blessed with divine purpose from birth that went onto achieve great things. Theseus, Perseus, Heracles (Hercules for the Romans and fans of the Disney film) and Jason.
There’s always a moment that puts these heroes on the map. For Theseus it was slaying the Minotaur. Perseus for taking the head of Medusa. Heracles for his twelve labours. Jason for retrieving the Golden Fleece.
At Hampden, in March, Scotland fans witnessed one of these moments in the flesh as Konstantinos Karetsas conquered the Scottish national team.
Aged just 17, the mercurial winger took on all comers, finding his way into the Scotland box seemingly at will, he scored a great goal but his greatest impact is the way he haunts the dreams of the far more experienced Scottish players that faced him that night.
Sometimes as a fan you can be genuinely astonished by a player, and I think most were that night. Making us all feel old and thinking about what we were doing at 17 instead of putting teams to the sword.
Video: BBC Scotland footage of Karetsas scoring at Hampden
It just so happens that the Greek demigod has a chance to perform in Scotland again, as he plays for KRC Genk.
I imagine most of us don’t watch Genk or the Greek national team regularly, so we don’t have the chance to see how Karetsas plays week-in week-out. Like a lot of young talents, the good performances are mythologised (see what I did there?) and the bad performances forgotten.
The truth is, despite his obvious talent, Karetsas will be as inconsistent as any young player. Top clubs in Europe wouldn’t be chasing him if they didn’t expect him to iron this out swiftly though. And the way he is trusted in men’s football despite his age tells you all about how he’s seen at his club.
I’m glad we are playing against him while his club is struggling and it’s early in the season, the prospect of facing a talent like him in a team playing well with plenty of football under his belt is truly terrifying.
A worry for Rangers is that Karetsas won’t face an experienced pro tomorrow, but 19-year-old Jayden Meghoma. That’s a key battle, and it’s a challenge for Meghoma to use a bit of ingenuity and patience when defending as I don’t think his physical attributes will help him much here.
Home Sweet Home
In theory, tomorrow’s fixture represents the return of a happy set of circumstances for Rangers in recent seasons. It’s a home game in the Europa League. Last season only Olympique Lyon and Fenebahce were able to win at Ibrox (Fenerbahce also lost the tie on penalties).
Normally part of this is how buoyed the team will be by the home crowd and vice versa. I struggle to see the atmosphere being as ferocious tomorrow.
Apathy levels are high given there’s plenty of unsold tickets still, and for the fans who will attend, I imagine the anger levels are at a similar stage.
Genk will be especially keen to keep the ball as that is a guaranteed way for the home crowd to get on the backs of the players.
Rangers need to counter this by starting fast, I don’t think we started particularly well on Saturday, but we did well to wrestle control of the match and once we got our goals, Hibs didn’t have much of a look in.
That has to be even better tomorrow, win the midfield battle and get the territory we need to play.
I expect we will see a very similar team if not the same as Saturday’s. If we feel like there will be more space in behind then I’d be tempted to start Antman over Moore on the right. The Finn’s runs in behind were excellent against Plzen at Ibrox and I expect there will be more space than in league games.
One player who won’t play a part will be Max Aarons. We’ve not seen him since his red card in Bruges. Perhaps rightly so, but the fact is, he will be with us until at least January. So at some stage we should look at reintegrating him into the team, just so he isn’t coming in from the cold if we ever require his services.
Cornelius and Souttar are a well balanced partnership at the back, and the Canadian’s passes into the left channel will be important in freeing up our European top-scorer, Djeidi Gassama. I thought we were able to isolate Gassama against the fullback much more often on Saturday, so hopefully we see that again.
Miovski will be very keen to build on his first Rangers goal at the weekend and I hope the atmosphere is better than I expect so he can experience his first European home night at Ibrox properly.
Our midfield 3 will benefit from more minutes together, so I hope they can give us a platform to get forward effectively.
Conclusion
It feels like a game with pressure on both managers, similar to the Old Firm a few weeks ago. That turned into a stalemate featuring a serious lack of risk from either team. I hope we don’t see the same tomorrow, and if anyone smells blood in the water, let’s hope it’s Rangers and not Genk.