SK Brann vs Rangers preview: Everybody wants to Röhl the World
Rangers travel to Bergen for their first game under Danny Röhl
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 all, it’s time for Rangers to get back into European action, a few things have changed since last time.
New Röhls
The doom and gloom around Rangers has shifted, well, somewhat shifted. If “doom and gloom” is code for Russell Martin, then he has fully shifted.
For his replacement Rangers have appointed young German Danny Röhl as the new head coach. I published a detailed article on Rangers’ new manager yesterday, I’ve included the link below if you’d like to read it.
Heads will Röhl
One thing that I didn’t address in the above article is that tomorrow’s game will be Röhl’s first European game as a manager. He has plenty of European experience from his time as a coach, but taking the reigns is a different kettle of fish.
It’s also an away fixture rather than at home. Despite the misgivings some fans have over his appointment, I’m certain that there would be a very enthusiastic reception for the manager at Ibrox Stadium on a European night.
Europe is a big step for any player or manager. But given Röhl is a manager who is tactically flexible, preparing for a different kind of opponent should suit the German’s game-by-game approach.
However, the obvious issue here is that he has taken very few training sessions with the team, so I’m not sure what kind of game plan he can really introduce.
One thing that is clear from listening to the new head coach talk about his style of play, it requires a lot of high intensity sprints, as a result this needs careful load management to avoid injuries to players. A drastic change in physical style can mean that the team spends large spells of the game tired, this is worth the risk for the long term gain. It’s also important that you don’t sacrifice the physical standards for short term gain.
I mentioned in my article that Röhl is fond of a back 3/5 for certain games. Although playing away in Europe would potentially be the perfect game to employ this shape, given the aforementioned lack of time on the training pitch it could be a big risk to change things so soon into his tenure.
Röhl is also fond of a 4-2-3-1 shape that becomes a 4-4-2 out of possession and that would probably suit the personnel Rangers have available. This will allow Rangers to be compact in spells without the ball but maintain a strong front 4 when they obtain the ball.
I’ll speak in more detail about how that shape might work in Rangers favour after discussing the opposition.
Brann New Day
Tomorrow’s opposition hail from Bergen, Norway and will be familiar to St Mirren fans as they dumped them out of the Conference League qualifiers last year. They’ve improved since then and find themselves in the Europa League this season after dispatching AEK Larnaca and BK Hacken in the qualifiers.
They currently sit 3rd in the Eliteserien, 7 points off the top of the table with a game in hand. They are actually near the end of their domestic season as leagues in the Nordic regions run their season from March to November.
I imagine that means we are playing a team that’s very much fired up and preparing for the run-in, they will have one eye on the league as their game in hand is against Bodø/Glimt who sit in second place, 6 points ahead of Brann. Although Bodø/Glimt are also in European action this week.
SK Brann employ a 4-3-3 formation, something we are very used to seeing at Rangers. Interestingly their biggest attacking threat comes from fullback (sounds very familiar) in the form of Joachim Soltvedt. He is the clubs top assister with 10 this year, he also managed 3 goals.
From watching some clips of his contributions he’s got fantastic delivery from anywhere on the left and gets up and down the pitch constantly. He’s also the teams set piece taker (getting really familiar now) and provides quality delivery from there too.
Although he missed some games recently with injury he seems to be back fit for tomorrow’s game. The good news though, is that the home side are missing a few big names (relatively speaking).
Sævar Atli Magnússon was signed on a free transfer in July from Lyngby BK in Denmark. Nominally operating as a right winger, the Dane has had a tremendous impact in Norway with 10 goals in 16 appearances since his arrival (including a goal in each Europa League game so far). But, thankfully for Rangers, he picked up a knee injury while on international duty and is expected to miss tomorrow’s game.
Felix Horn Myhre is another doubt for the game, I believe he will play though. He’s got 5 goals and 4 assists from central midfield this season and is the creative heartbeat of the team.
Niklas Castro is another wide threat with 5 goals and 4 assists this season despite limited minutes. He was forced off at the weekend with an injury so is another doubt for SK Brann.
Hopefully it’s a stroke of luck for the new manager at Rangers that there are a few top players missing for the opposition.
In terms of attacking play, it’s clear that the wingers are some of the key pieces in this team. Generally the striker is happy to drop deep and free up the space for the wide players to make direct runs inside and attack the area.
It’s hard to judge if this is something Rangers will find particularly difficult to deal with as truthfully they’ve found all kinds of attacking play extremely difficult to deal with this season.
In Too Deep
From a Rangers perspective, the key goal of the game should be to stay compact and restrict the space that the Brann wide players will have to run into. I imagine that will look like the two deepest midfielders dropping in front of the back 4 and making the central area very congested. There has to be a lot of trust in the back-line as the fullbacks will need to leave the wide men to be picked up by the centre backs once they run inside.
That kind of trust is hard to establish with such a short amount of time on the training pitch, but I imagine Röhl will be looking to establish principles on and off the ball before he looks to provide any deep tactical plans to follow.
Djeidi Gassama said that he sees Röhl as a “father figure” from their time together at Sheffield Wednesday. With that in mind I expect the Frenchman to be a key part of any counter attacking approach employed by Rangers tomorrow. Gassama’s pace and directness have been Rangers’ most useful tool in Europe so far, and I expect that will continue. He produced a goal from nothing in Austria against Sturm Graz, hopefully he will be given more building blocks than “nothing” by the new manager.
On paper, SK Brann aren’t as strong a side as Rangers, however on the basis of this season so far, that doesn’t really count for much on the pitch. I want to see Rangers approach this game with some intelligence, stay compact off the ball, work hard defensively, use the ball effectively to utilise the pace of Antman and Gassama when you have it.
Stick to that and Rangers might just pick up their first Europa League win of the campaign.