KRIS COMMONS
EUROPA LEAGUE TIE IS LACED WITH DANGER FOR GERRARD AND FALTERING RANGERS
HAVING lost the Betfred Cup final to Celtic in such painful fashion back in early December, Steven Gerrard provided everyone at Rangers with the perfect pick-me-up.
Just four days later, the Ibrox manager guided his team to a 1-1 home draw against Young Boys which was enough to secure progress into the last 32 of the Europa League.
Then, just 24 hours later, it was announced that Gerrard had agreed a new contract until 2024. In terms of a response to their Hampden heartache, it was swift and entirely positive.
Yet the landscape has altered quite dramatically since then — not only for Gerrard and Rangers, but also for their European opponents Braga.
Back when the draw was made, Braga were toiling. Results were inconsistent and they were struggling to recapture the sort of form which saw them finish fourth in the Portuguese Primeira Liga last season.
Their problems escalated to the point that they sacked their previous manager just prior to Christmas, languishing in eighth in the league this time around.
At that stage, you’d have made Rangers heavy favourites to win the tie. But not now.
Since then, Braga have gone on a brilliant run and they go flying into Thursday night’s clash in Glasgow as arguably the form team in Portugal.
They have played nine matches under new head coach Ruben Amorim, winning eight of them and drawing the other. It’s an unbeaten run made all the more impressive when you look at the teams they’ve faced.
In the Portuguese League Cup, they beat Sporting Lisbon 2-1 in the semi-finals, before beating FC Porto 1-0 in the final just a couple of weeks ago.
Their exploits in the league have been just as impressive. They went away to Porto and won 2-1 in mid-January and followed that with a 1-0 victory over Sporting earlier this month.
So, in the space of a month, Amorim has masterminded a league and cup double over two of the country’s biggest clubs.
Benfica became their latest victims on Saturday night, when Braga went to the Estadio da Luz in Lisbon and won 1-0 against the team who currently sit top of the league.
Over the past six weeks, former
Portugal midfielder Amorim has lifted them from eighth to third place in the table, as well as winning a cup.
Meanwhile, back in Glasgow, Rangers’ season is threatening to implode. Make no mistake, this is a tie which is laced with danger for Gerrard and his players.
Listen, not for one second am I writing Rangers off. Some of Gerrard’s best results during his time at the club have come in European ties.
There’s a clear sense that his team are better suited to European football. They can play it cagey on the counter far more than they can domestically, when the onus is on them to break down packed defences.
But this is now a massive moment in their season. If they can get the better of Braga over two legs, it would inject some much-needed momentum back into the Ibrox camp.
If they lose, though, the heat will be turned up considerably. Yeah, I understand that getting this far in Europe was always going to be viewed as a bonus by the majority of fans.
But you have to view it all in context. Stopping Celtic’s march to Nine-In-A-Row was always the priority, but the wheels have come off that particular wagon quite spectacularly.
If they then go and follow that with a weak European exit, particularly if they were to suffer a heavy aggregate defeat over the two legs, it would pile the pain on Gerrard.
He took responsibility for the defeat at Kilmarnock last week, but only to a degree.
By questioning the mentality and bottle of his players, he did still effectively throw them under a bus.
Gerrard is, ultimately, the man who signed them. If he has assembled a group of prima donnas who can’t handle the heat, then he’s as culpable as anyone else in all of this.
For their season to unravel so dramatically for the second season on the spin, there is a sense that Gerrard is surviving purely on reputation at the moment. If it wasn’t such a highprofile figure in the hotseat, it would be getting to the stage now where fans would be hounding him out of the door.
There’s a lack of ideas in this
Rangers team. They have become stale and one-dimensional. So, in that sense, a return to the European arena may offer them a chance to rediscover their spark.
Gerrard spoke at the weekend of his admiration for Walter Smith, the old master who was able to coax an unfashionable Rangers team to the UEFA Cup final in 2008.
He also spoke of his experiences under Rafa Benitez and Fabio Capello, another two of the game’s great tacticians whom he played under during his own career.
It all points to Gerrard deploying a cagey approach against the Portuguese outfit. If it proves successful and he can extend this European run, it may yet prove to be his moment of salvation.