Rangers host Ross County at Ibrox tomorrow in the latest ‘must-win’ fixture given the other team aren’t slipping up at the moment.
Rangers’ form has been increasingly impressive in recent matches, with the visitors blitzing Hearts at Tynecastle and hoping to do the same to County in Govan, but what XI will manager Michael Beale go with to put this one away?
Curiously enough, if there’s one thing we’re learning about this boss, it’s that he likes to spring surprises in the team selection. While there is a core of players who do seem to get chosen more than others, they amount to 7 – Tavernier, Goldson, Davies, Barisic, Kent, Fashion, and Morelos.
The other four do vary, in goal, and the midfield three.
It is likely to be McGregor in fairness, he’s back to being number one, we think, even if the boss likes to chuck useless Jon McLaughlin in there just to keep it interesting.
Back four we know, front three fairly predictable.
But the middle is definitely interesting. Kamara? Jack? Lundstram? Tillman? Cantwell? Arfield?
The only one we know isn’t there is Nicolas Raskin whose work permit is being a little held up and is 99% unlikely to be ready in time, but aside him, the usuals are available.
So our XI is a bit of a guess, in all honesty, and frankly we actually like that because if it keeps fan sites like Ibrox Noise guessing, it does the same to the opposition as well:
McGregor; Tavernier, Goldson, Davies, Barisic; Lundstram, Kamara, Cantwell; Kent, Morelos, Sakala
But it could honestly be quite different to this. Beale keeps us on our toes, and we’ll find out tomorrow how correct, or otherwise, we were, but most importantly as long as Rangers have three points more at the end of 90 minutes than we did at the start, the XI doesn’t ultimately matter all that much.
Beale is definitely decent at feeding red herrings to the press, albeit we’ve called it what it is more than once, but as long as Rangers keep winning, he could be telling us the sky is pink for all it matters.
Winning is number one, how we get there less so.