James Sands starts: Rangers confirm starting line-up v Aberdeen
Giovanni van Bronckhorst has made one change to Rangers’ starting line-up for the clash with Aberdeen at Pittodrie on Tuesday night.
Ahead of kick-off, the Gers confirmed via their official Twitter account that James Sands has come straight into the starting line-up to make his Gers debut after signing on loan from New York City earlier this month.
From the team that beat St Mirren in their last game before the winter break, the one change van Bronckhorst has made sees Joe Aribo drop out due to his involvement at the Africa Cup of Nations.
Cedric Itten was recalled from his loan this month too and he’s on the bench.
Academy ace Charlie McCann is in the squad for the first time as well as James Sands.
Back to it
After the farce of an extended winter break, Rangers will return to Scottish Premiership action with a testing trip to Aberdeen.
Before the winter break started, van Bronckhorst had overseen a stunning run of form and he’s still yet to lose as the Gers’ manager and is also yet to drop a point in the league.
It’s been a while since that 2-0 win over St Mirren on Boxing Day but we’d expect that van Bronckhorst’s men will be fit and raring to go after a good break.
Hopefully, the momentum won’t have slowed down but every club is in the same position as us and you just know that there will have been nothing but hard work going on at Auchenhowie over the New Year and the last couple of weeks.
It’ll be interesting to see how it goes, especially as Gio will have had a mini pre-season to continue putting his stamp on the squad.
Aberdeen were in decent form themselves before the winter break, winning four of their last five matches to move up to sixth and rubbish any predictions of them suffering a shock relegation.
However, there’s enough about this Rangers team to be able to beat the Dons – at Pittodrie or anywhere else – even if they weren’t fully fit, full of confidence and didn’t have a fully available squad.
We predict a 2-0 win for the Gers tonight.
In other Rangers news, a player linked with the Gers has handed in a transfer request.