Rangers favourites against ‘extremely erratic’ Braga – Barry Ferguson
Rangers were perhaps the luckiest of all the teams in the Europa League quarter-final draw having been pitched against Portuguese side Braga.
They are languishing some 24 points behind Liga NOS league leaders FC Porto having failed to win more than two games in succession in any competition all season.
Ex-Light Blues player Barry Ferguson believes Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s side have a great chance to progress to the last four net month.
“Dodging a date with Barcelona, Lyon and the Hammers is a boost but landing a return to Braga is about as good a result as my old team could have hoped for,” Ferguson wrote in his Daily Record column.
“It’s 100 per cent a winnable tie and not just because we got the better of them in 2020.
“Carlos Carvalhal’s team have done well to match Rangers’ run to the last eight but they’ve been an extremely erratic bunch all season.
“So having dominated Dortmund and raged past Red Star Belgrade, the lads are in with a great shout of marching on again.”
Complacency
As much as Rangers fans might be thinking they’ve got the best draw, Braga fans may well be suggesting the same thing for them.
The rest of the last eight are all playing in one of Europe’s big five leagues and fighting near the top of them too.
van Bronckhorst is in danger of becoming complacent knowing they have avoided the big names of Barcelona, West Ham and RB Leipzig and that could leave them vulnerable to Braga on 7 and 14 April (the dates for the two legs).
One thing the Gers do have going for them is previous history having dramatically beat their quarter-final opponents back in 2020 in their own back yard and there is big hopes of a repeat next month.
Things could have been harder for sure but Rangers will make this game as hard as they want it to be in their preparation.
In other Rangers news, a supercomputer has shared the chances of the Light Blues going onto win the Europa League this season.