It’s always been a mystery why Rangers do so much better in Europe than in the SPL, but could this be the reason?

When Rangers play in Europe the team spend days poring over videos of their opponents, to try to find every single weakness in their opponent.

In the SPL, the team already know their opponents…so they don’t bother.

If anyone has a better reason for why we struggle so much against middling Scottish teams, please feel free to let us know.

Anyway…Rangers will be fielding a team against Braga that is almost identical to the team that played two years ago. Hagi and Alfie of course, are out with injury, but when you go through our current first team the only real difference otherwise are Barisic and Davis are no longer first team picks, and Edmundson left Rangers long ago.

Braga doesn’t really need an introduction, but the Braga of 2022 is a very different team from the one we faced two years ago.

Gone is the crazy attack at all cost, and don’t bother too much about defence, and in its place we now see a team that plays an almost carbon-copy of the game-plan Steven Gerrard used to play (in other words a team that attempts an overload at various areas on the pitch) but with the backline instead deploying three central defenders to hinder the fast counter-attack, thus creating a 3-4-2-1/4-3-3 type formation, where the right midfielder will drop back when required, or bomb forward to create a high press.

In other words, floating right midfielder converts the 3-4-2-1 formation to Steven Gerrard’s favoured 4-3-3 formation, with the right midfielder playing Tavernier’s role.

In fact, Rangers made such an impression in Portugal, that all the top Portuguese teams have changed how they play, and many now adopt a more Rangers-centric style.

And this overhaul is also seen in the Braga team. Amongst all the players who played just two short years ago at Ibrox only Abel Ruiz (their forward) survives.

So can this Rangers team beat this new, upgraded Braga team….Well yeah, we have already played against teams who have deployed this type of formation against us, but the way Braga is set up is just a bit more defensive minded, which means this is a more balanced team than some of the teams we have played against.

So, it will be tough match (are there any easy games left?), and with Morelos out injured, it just seems that this could be a game that is decided by a simple mistake, and perhaps just one goal.

Game on.