With no wins in their last 6, there’s never been a better time to face Switzerland’s Servette, who might not have lost competitively since late April against the mighty Young Boys, but they’ve picked a terrible time for them to fall into poor form.
A modest 5th in a 12-team table, they have three draws in a row, and just one win this season, v similarly lowly Grasshoppers.
So Rangers are by no means travelling to a colossus on their own patch, and it looks like Servette’s burst of form which took them to second place domestically last season and a Champions League second-round of qualifying slot is a thing of the past and they’ve dipped aggressively.
Rangers have picked the absolute best time to finally find form after an indifferent preseason at best, with that horrible loss at Kilmarnock fading ever more into the background as wins v Servette then a convincing dispatch of Livingston enforced the improvement.
Of course, we’re far from the finished article, but a good performance and securing the result tomorrow would help continue the decent vein of form and get us, slightly against initial expectations, into the playoffs probably versus former foes PSV.
The press naturally is making a big deal of that and the potential match up with Malik Tillman, but on Ibrox Noise we are not. We are dealing with Servette first.
And they are having a poor season.
Despite that ground-out result to Genk, they have been in horrible form this campaign, and most fans knew that a better performance from the home side last midweek would have yielded more goals.
It isn’t going to be a cakewalk, it cannot be at this level, but if the Livi Rangers turn up and Michael Beale doesn’t hijack his team selection, passage is very possible indeed.
Ibrox awaits.