Those who believe Rangers are bound to improve in their Champions League second leg against Malmo, and that they have already seen the best of the Swedes, should hope their airy complacency is not shared among the management team inside Ibrox. Steven Gerrard has every right to feel confident about the conclusion of Tuesday’s third qualifying round but he is experienced and streetwise enough to respect where Rangers are. The tie could yet get away from them.
The return of a noisy, pulsating Ibrox support will transform the atmosphere and lift the Rangers team — and it will have to. Six European opponents came to an empty Ibrox last season and only Lech Poznan failed to score at least once. Benfica, Standard Liege, Royal Antwerp and Slavia Prague all scored twice, all adding weight to the evidence that Rangers concede too often in Europe. They have let in 17 goals in their last 11 European matches and nine in their last five, failing to keep a clean sheet in their most recent games against Antwerp and Slavia — home or away — and Malmo.
The move which gave Malmo their opener on Tuesday night was cleaner and better-executed than anything Rangers managed all night, a warning that Jon Dahl Tomasson’s men need not think it beyond them to score again in Glasgow.
That would not be a ruinous away goal these days but, were they to score first, it would deflate an Ibrox crowd which Gerrard has already said he will rely on to charge his players.
Naturally the manager did not name names when he talked of going around the dressing room in Malmo and telling several of his side their performance levels had to “sharply” improve, but neither Connor Goldson, James Tavernier, Borna Barisic, Scott Arfield or John Lundstram were at their best and Ryan Kent and Scott Wright flattered to deceive, neither of them having much success at penetrating the Swedish back three. All are capable of much more. Glen Kamara and Joe Aribo were missed from a midfield three which was too pedestrian.
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Cedric Itten led the attack well while he was on but he was too far from goal to offer a threat. Collectively Rangers’ passing and cohesion were poorer than normal and, unusually, they were unable to exert control until a spell of prolonged late pressure yielded Steven Davis’s deflected shot and precious stoppage-time goal.
Rangers will still be weakened on Tuesday. Aribo and Ianis Hagi should return after knocks — they can offer more than Arfield and Wright — but Kemar Roofe will serve the second match of his four-game Uefa ban and Kamara the second of his three.
If Alfredo Morelos appears it would be remarkable if he made a significant impact in such a high intensity game after weeks of inactivity. Morelos has played nine minutes of football in three months having appeared only as a late substitute in one of Colombia’s Copa America games, against Peru on June 20. Since then he has had a two-week summer break at home in Cereté and returned to serve 10 days of quarantine in a hotel, missing Rangers’ pre-season. The sight of him lightly jogging around a hotel car park did nothing to inspire confidence that he will be anything like fit and sharp enough to have a prominent role on Tuesday.
Still, they need only one unanswered goal to level the tie and they are easily capable of that. Only Slavia denied them at Ibrox last season and they battered in 13 goals against the other visitors. Even without Roofe and a fully functioning Morelos, Kent or Hagi can score, Itten could get on the end of a cross or Fashion Sakala might emerge. If Rangers score first, completing the comeback from two-down in the tie, it could galvanise them to come again at Malmo and go ahead.
There was little evidence that they could do that in the Eleda Stadium, though, where Malmo looked limited in attack but still a capable, physically powerful and well-organised side which generally contained and subdued Rangers. They were left kicking themselves at the concession of that late Davis goal but there was no sense of hopelessness from Tomasson when he spoke after the match. Rangers will have to tighten up in defence, concentrate, hold their nerve and offer more authority in midfield to provide the foundations to get through. The winners will play Oympiacos or Ludogorets, whose first leg 1-1 draw in Greece offered equally few clues about who will meet in the play-off.
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•Jordan Jones left Rangers to join League One club Wigan Athletic yesterday on a permanent deal for an undisclosed fee. The 26-year-old Northern Ireland international joined from Kilmarnock in 2019 but appeared only 19 times, scoring once before being loaned to Sunderland. He injured himself making a tackle which earned a red card in a 2019 Old Firm game and was suspended by the SFA and disciplined by Rangers for breaking Covid-19 lockdown rules to attend a house party.
