Draw v Braga would be ‘acceptable’ for Rangers – Ian Murray
Rangers have made the journey to Portugal for this evening’s Europa League quarter-final first leg against Braga hoping to emulate previous successes.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s men have performed admirably in Europe this season having already beaten Borussia Dortmund and Red Star Belgrade just to make it to this stage of the competition.
The winner of this tie will take on either RB Leipzig or Atalanta in the semi-final with Barcelona or West Ham potentially waiting in the final should results go as expected.
Ex-Gers player Ian Murray, now Airdrie manager, believes that his former side don’t have to win tonight to have an adequate evening with a draw enough to make them favourites for the overall victory.
“They are certainly capable of winning – as they showed in Dortmund – but a draw would be acceptable,” Murray said to the Scottish Daily Express.
“As disappointed as they’ll be about Sunday (the 2-1 Old Firm derby defeat to Celtic) and the gap domestically they will go into the Braga game with confidence.
“I think Rangers can go out and play their own game but they’ll have to be really, really solid.”
Stay in it
The first leg of any European contest, whether that be the Europa League or Champions League, is often a cagey affair and with good reason too.
No team wants to leave themselves with a mountain to climb in the second leg by losing the first by a considerable margin so they often err on the side of caution.
Rangers are all too aware of the damage a first-leg defeat can do as they inflicted that upon Dortmund in the playoff round earlier this year.
That 4-2 win at Signal Iduna Park put the game virtually beyond the reach of the Black and Yellow and they cannot afford to have that same fate fall on their shoulders now.
Life has been made harder with the season-ending injury to top-scorer Alfredo Morelos but as long as van Bronckhorst’s men aren’t more than one goal behind come full-time tonight, they can head back to Glasgow full of confidence.
In other Rangers news, a BBC pundit has shared that the Gers will want to sell these two players in the summer.