Rangers development provides inadvertent boost for Old Firm rivals Celtic
Michael Beale would have taken a sigh of relief as Rangers eased the pressure on his shoulders a little more by starting their Europa League campaign with a 1-0 win over Real Betis on Thursday (21 September).
The Gers followed up a 2-0 victory at St Johnstone at the weekend by getting off the board nice and early in Europe’s secondary competition.
Beale will be well aware that many more victories will be required in the coming weeks after a difficult start to the campaign saw calls for his dismissal increase.
But for now he is keeping the naysayers at bay, even if the victory over LaLiga outfit Betis did provide a potential inadvertent boost to their fierce Old Firm rivals Celtic.
You see, Scotland is facing a battle to keep its top-10 place in UEFA’s coefficient standings, which offers the nation an automatic spot in the Champions League.
As per Football Scotland (22 September), Scotland currently resides in 10th place on the list with a score of 32.050. Rangers were the only Scottish team to win this week, with Celtic losing to Feyenoord in the Champions League and Aberdeen beaten 2-1 by Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa Conference League.
The good news is, the two nearest countries chasing Scotland – Austria (30.400) and Switzerland (29.975) – did not have the best of weeks either.
LASK were beaten 3-1 by Liverpool and Sturm Graz went down 2-1 to Sporting Lisbon, though Salzburg overcame Benfica 2-0. For the Swiss, Young Boys and Servette lost to RB Leipzig and Slavia Prague respectively, while Lugano drew 0-0 with Bodo/Glimt.
Scotland are not too far off ninth-place Turkey (33.850) in the standings, though draws for Galatasaray and Besiktas coupled with a win for Fenerbahce meant no ground was made.
For now, though, Rangers can just be glad that another win was chalked up and they will want to continue building confidence in Europe…even if that does end up helping out Celtic too!
In other Rangers news, Michaeal Beale raved about “fantastic” Jack Butland following the Betis win.