Rangers Vs Panathinaikos Preview!
Champions League Qualifying Round 3 - 1st leg
This article was kindly written as a guest contribution to the page by Adam Bortkiewicz.
Adam is a Rangers fan from Glasgow and is an aspiring sports writer, who contributed a couple of articles to my twitter account last season. He has a long running Rangers fan blog, which he has recently migrated to substack under the blog name “Near and Far”.
Throughout the season, I’ll be inviting fans from a variety of different teams to see if they’d like to contribute to the website in any way. If you have a passion for your club and would like to give writing a go - please get in touch.
I will continue my usual level of posting on all clubs from a neutral viewpoint, but I thought that supporters might enjoy reading from their fellow fan from time-to-time. I have added a “byline” section to the top of every article, so you’ll now be able to see at a glance if it was written by Gavin - (Scotland’s Coefficient) or if it was a fan contribution by the named writer.
Adam’s name shows at the top of this article.
Thanks, Gavin
Good evening all, Rangers line up for their first competitive game under Russell Martin against Panathinaikos tomorrow evening at 19:45pm, live on Premier Sports 1.
This is a big game, it’s a baptism of fire for a new Rangers manager. Do we have the tools to progress? Let’s have a look at what we’ve seen from the club so far and what awaits us at Ibrox stadium.
I know what you did last this summer
I don’t want to dedicate too many words to Rangers summer transfer business given I’ll likely do that in a future article. But given it’s our first competitive game of the season and we’ve seen a fair bit of movement so far I think it’s worth mentioning.
The new owners and Russell Martin haven’t been shy about the fact that this Rangers squad requires some major surgery to be competitive on multiple fronts in the coming season.
On outgoings, there hasn’t been much to report, the only departures have been those leaving at the end of their deals like Leon Balogun, Tom Lawrence and Ianis Hagi. It’s nice to see some wages shaved off the bill, but fans would have expected more, there are several players who should never wear a Rangers shirt again still hanging around the club.
Moves away for Robin Propper and Ben Davies have seemed to drag on all summer, with the hope being that those two can be shifted for reasonable fees to locations where their respective reputations remain fairly strong.
Mohammed Diomande, Nico Raskin, Cyriel Dessers and Hamza Igamane have all had various transfer links and reports of offers made to Rangers. But as of yet, none of these bids have been considered worthy of a reply.
The departure lounge may be fairly empty but it seems like several shuttle buses may be required at arrivals.
Thelo Aasgaard, Emmanuel Fernandez, Djeidi Gassama and Joe Rothwell have all arrived at Ibrox on permanent deals. With Max Aarons and Nasser Djiga joining on loan for the season.
All of the signings fall firmly in the tenants of strong squad building:
Young talent signed to improve the team in future - Fernandez
First team ready players signed for less than their current value - Aasgaard, Gassama
Experience to strengthen the leadership core of a (hopefully) young squad - Rothwell
High quality starters on loan to improve results in the short term without adding financial pressure - Djiga, Aarons
The main disappointment of the window has largely been that we couldn’t get more moves done ahead of the deadline for the European squad registration (17th July). Hopefully that isn’t something that comes back to bite us.
A drachma for your thoughts
Before I give some very light analysis on our opposition tomorrow, I’d be better directing you to this fantastic in-depth piece by Patrick Caskie.
I could never achieve that kind of detail so I will be taking a broader approach.
Squad-wise, there’s a mismatch of recognisable names: Tin Jedvaj, Alban Lafont, Bartlomiej Dragowski, Phillip Max, Pedro Chirivella and Tetê. Supplemented by a variety of strong domestic talent.
Very reminiscent of the Olympiakos team that Rangers played in Athens last season. Unfortunately I used up all my Greek philosophy based references on that article as I didn’t bank on us playing another Greek team so soon.
Despite the wealth of individual talent it’s clear that Panathinaikos are a very structure heavy side. Lots of possession and high pressing while relying on volume over precision in the final third.
I imagine Russell Martin will be licking his lips watching tapes of the Athens-based side. His first competitive game and he has a chance to show his tactical acumen and problem solving by setting Rangers up to exploit the weaknesses in the opposition’s system.
We might be slightly inhibited by Butland’s ability to play with his feet, but I suspect we will see plenty baiting of the high press before playing sharply through the lines. Diomande will be key to this approach, his ability to take in the half turn will turn stable possession into an attack very easily.
I expect that the key to exploiting the Greeks will be forcing them into the wide areas where they don’t feel particularly comfortable creating from.
Aside from that, the onus will likely be on Rangers tomorrow to get the ball and force the Greeks onto the back foot given the game’s taking place at Ibrox. In Athens it may be a different story.
Out with the old and in with the…eh...old?
As I alluded to earlier, our options for this game are sadly more limited than I’m sure the club would like.
In terms of starting line-up, I expect we will see Butland keep his place in goal, there’s been links to goalkeepers but nothing has materialised yet. Tavernier will start at right back with Aarons playing left back (no Ridvan in the European squad). The central defenders will be Djiga and Souttar. That part of the team seems fairly set from the behind closed doors line-ups.
Midfield is where it could get interesting. New signing Thelo Aasgaard would likely have started in the front 3 but he’s been absent from training after picking up a knock in a friendly, so I think it will be a surprise if he makes the bench.
Diomande and Raskin will likely start, if it ain’t broke and all that. The last spot is between Joe Rothwell and Kieran Dowell. Dowell’s emergence as one of the “leadership group” has been surprising to say the least, but if he can have a positive impact on the squad without actually playing that much then I won’t be too angry. However, for a game of this magnitude I want to see Rothwell, he’s the superior player and is experienced in big occasions (even if he’s lacking some European experience).
The front 3 will feel very familiar, new signing Djiedi Gassama isn’t ready to start after a disrupted pre-season due to whatever nonsense was going on at Sheffield Wednesday. Aasgaard would have been a contender here too, but as aforementioned, he doesn’t look like he’s going to make it.
Danilo will start as the striker, his form in pre-season has been exceptional, and I really hope he can carry that into the season and (crucially) stay fit! Dessers and Igamane are fit enough for the bench should we need to roll the dice.
With all that in mind I expect we will see Oscar Cortes on one wing and a toss up between Nedim Bajrami and Findlay Curtis to start on the other. There’s obviously a significant difference in experience there, but Curtis has had significant minutes in pre-season so that makes me wonder if Martin likes the cut of his jib. I’m obviously very much on the “Sell Bajrami” train, if anything I’d at least be the conductor of said train, but he had a promising cameo against Club Brugge and has obviously avoided doing anything horrendously wrong in training. The Albanian’s experience might edge him ahead of the youngster for such an important game.
The atmosphere tomorrow will be balanced on a knife edge, start well and take control and Ibrox will be deafening. A slow start, or even worse, going a goal down, you can forget about that. Fans are keen to get behind the team, but there’s doubts about Russell Martin from large swathes of the support. It won’t take long for those doubts to be expressed from the stands if they don’t like what they are seeing.
The manager will be aware of that, I expect the intensity to be high from the first whistle, we won’t want to give the Greeks time to get into a rhythm and hold the ball. Our press will be high and aggressive, maybe bordering on risky, I’m not against that at all. Better sides than Panathinaikos have stumbled under the gaze of the Ibrox microscope, there’s no point letting them think this is somewhere where they can set up and hold the ball.
Lay it all on the line
So, what’s at stake for Rangers tomorrow night and for the tie in general? Well in terms of larger point stakes I’ll direct you to my colleague, second name Coefficient, first name Scotland’s. He will have all the information you need.
For Rangers specifically, win the tie and we go onto face Viktoria Plzen or Servette. That’s a favourable draw, and should be serious motivation to progress beyond this stage of qualifying. Lose it and we drop down into a tougher tie against Beşiktaş or Shakhtar Donetsk to get into the Europa League play off.
With the prospect of tougher opponents if we drop down, realistically we need to at least make our way past Panathinaikos or we might need to start learning the Conference League theme music (spoiler: it doesn’t have its own theme, embarrassing).
I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but the prospect of the UCL qualification money is something that will massively motivate the owners and could potentially accelerate this rebuild we have going.
This qualification run feels very reminiscent of that first UCL campaign under Gerrard following our title win in 2021. We knew there was a significant chance for the club to get a real financial leg up over Celtic by qualifying. Malmö awaited Rangers in the 3rd Round qualifier. A 2-1 away loss in Sweden was bad but the away goal was huge on paper. Morelos put us 1 goal up at home and when Malmö went down to 10 men, we began to dream of the play off. But it wasn’t to be, future Rangers hitman Antonio Colak put paid to those dreams with a quickfire double.
We frittered that opportunity away and it had a significant impact on the squad for that campaign. The club have to avoid that same fate here.
By no means are tomorrow’s opponents easy, but we have to be confident of getting beyond this tie and then we can really start dreaming big.
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