For those who grew up watching Denmark play in the 1990s Brondby need no introduction.
They were the core of the Denmark team that won the European Championship in 1992, and they also gave us Lars Olsen, Michael Laudrup and his younger brother Brian Laudrup, who we all know from his time at Rangers.
And here’s some useful, or useless trivia. In 1996, on April the 24th, Scotland lost 2-0 to Denmark and the two scorers that day were Michael and Brian Laudrup.
Since then, Brondby has struggled, and in 2013, the club was close to bankruptcy, but was finally taken over and saved by a small group of investors
Today the manager of Brondby is Niels Frederiksen, and after watching how he deploys his teams he seems to plays a zonal system, with his preferred formation being 3-5-2, with two wing backs supporting three centre-backs; but, recently, with losses mounting, he has changed to a 3-4-3 formation, in an attempt to create a more aggressive team with a much stronger emphasis on attack.
My prediction is he will go with the 3-4-3 formation on Thursday.
With it now being 30 years since 1992, Brondby are not the all-conquering team they once were, and with Rangers (thankfully) now showing far better cohesion than three weeks ago, Rangers should be too strong for Brondby.
Within their team, we need to be very careful to stop Mikael Uhre, who is now the equal top scorer in the Danish Superliga with seven goals.
They can also link reasonably well in midfield and can hit quickly on the break, but they do struggle when they are pressed.
In fact, in recent games, at the back they have been very shaky, and under pressure they seem to make even more mistakes than Celtic.
When defending their midfield tends to go central, and they try to box the opponent’s midfielders to prevent passes through the middle of the field.
This forces opponents to pass the ball to the wings, and to resort to crosses into the box.
Being blunt this is not a strong European team, and though Brondby did win the Danish Superliga last year, they only managed to win 19 of their 32 games, and their first place finish was more down to their opponents not being able to take advantage of Brondby’s multiple draws and loses.
This year they are now 6th and they have won only 3 of their first 12 matches, and their fans are not happy.
My prediction is a win with the final score being 3 – 0 for Rangers, but after losing the first two matches by deploying absolutely stupid tactics, at this point we really just need the win, and I really don’t care how many goals we score.