Michael Owen predicts result of Rangers clash v Benfica
Michael Owen has predicted that Rangers’ winning streak will come to a screeching halt at the hands of Benfica in Lisbon on Thursday night.
Rangers travel to Estadio da Luz having won all of their last nine matches across all competitions but Steven Gerrard’s former team-mate is tipping Benfica to beat the Light Blues 2-1 in the Europa League this week.
The Gers have been impressive in Europe so far this season having beaten Willem II and Galatasaray to qualify for the Europa League group stages before seeing off Standard Liege and Lech Poznan.
But Benfica are too high a mountain to conquer in the eyes of Owen, who’s been excited by what he’s seen from the Portuguese giants.
“Rangers got there in the end against Lech Poznan to make it two wins from two in this year’s Europa League,” Owen wrote on the BetVictor website.
“Themselves and Benfica both go into this as joint Group D leaders, so something has to give.
“Benfica have looked excellent at times so far, and I think they may have too much for the Glaswegian’s here.”
It’s going to be a tough game and if we lose 2-1 away at Benfica, it probably won’t be the worst result in the world as long as the performance isn’t dire.
This is the hardest game in the group by far and even if we do lose, at least we can welcome Benfica to Ibrox last this month and try to give back what they handed to us.
But Benfica did lose quite comprehensively at the weekend so they might not be in the best of shape when they host Rangers in Lisbon.
Boavista, who are by no means one of the top teams in Portugal and finished 12th last season, hammered Benfica 3-0 at the weekend.
Stats by WhoScored show that Benfica had just seven shots to Boavista’s 15, even though they completed more than double the passes Boavista did.
Rangers could have a shred of hope after all.
In other Rangers news, fans are furious and want one of the club’s sponsorship deals terminated after what happened on Twitter.