Kilmarnock vs Rangers preview: Do or do not, there is no try.

Morning everyone, Rangers travel to one of our (least) favourite venues today in Rugby park, to take on a Kilmarnock side in mixed form under Derek McInnes. They've won 1 and drawn 3 in their last 4, but they aren't a team to be taken lightly, especially away from home.

Before I get going with my analysis though, I have some personal news, alongside getting a promotion at my work last week. I have been invited to be a regular contributor to The Rangers Journal. I've included a link to their twitter and you can see their Youtube and Facebook pages from there, go and give them a follow if you enjoy reading my content. I have already contributed my first article about the number 10 role at Rangers if you haven't seen that already.

It's obviously been a while since I've written anything on here, but in the meantime Nils Koppen gave an interview about his role at the club and his plans. In terms of saying the right things it hit all the marks, he's someone that speaks with a real intelligence and in a very measured way. His transfer record hasn't been perfect ofcourse, but there's no doubt its a step in the right direction, we just need to see some change and appointments in the areas around him to give him the structure to succeed.

He also made mention of us missing out on bringing Abdallah Sima back to Ibrox. From the sounds of it, it wasn't a fee we could afford without UCL money, and Cortes represented a cheaper alternative who was also a "safe" signing given his early promise last season. There was also mention that Cortes isn't actually injury prone, it's started since he arrived, which doesn't really fill me with confidence in our medical team.

Brief mention of the Scotland games, Souttar was very good against Portugal, which is a real positive and shows that he's developing into a very reliable defender. Hopefully that upward trend can continue.

Onto the game, our line-up is already out so let's react to it as we go.

There isn't a huge amount to react to, I think many thought Lawrence would be protected from the plastic pitch, but given he scored the winner here last season he obviously is capable of doing something here.

Dessers continues upfront and I think we are all crossing our fingers that something can happen for him to get him out of the funk he's in at the moment. Raskin comes out for Barron which I actually think is harsh given his performance against the Saints.

This is the game for players like Bajrami and Cerny to show their quality. I spoke in my piece for the Journal about how the Albanian is more of a facilitator than an end-product guy for us, and this is the kind of game where him opening the door for someone like Jefte or Lawrence could be the crucial moment. I might publish more detailed thoughts on Cerny as well, but I've spoken previously about him being a wide forward who wants to be in the final third at all times. For away games we need to let Barron cover Tav to allow Cerny to stay high with more of a chance of making a difference.

Sterling misses out due to personal reasons and that is a shame as he could have had a big impact off the bench to help us crack down on a Killie team that can get very physical.

In terms of actual performance, I think Clement already has a good blueprint for playing Kilmarnock. We needs lots of rotations in midfield to pull the man-marking Killie midfield around to create some gaps. Dessers will need to tighten up his overall game, we saw him contribute massively to our 2-1 win last season coming off the bench in the second half, in terms of performance outside the box it was one of his best for Rangers. But recently he's looked more like a training dummy with his control and movement, that really needs to change today.

Ofcourse, winning is even more crucial today as Celtic dropped points against the Dons yesterday from 2 goals up. We've all got memories of Rangers failing to take advantage of these kinds of opportunities from right back to the Gerrard days. Losing our game in hand away to Kilmarnock after the winter break will always stick in my mind, given we'd reinforced with Davis and Defoe and really looked set to kick on.

The stakes don't feel as high given how far we are behind already, but this would be a step in the right direction for our season and I don't want to consider the reaction if we contrived to drop points today.

That's all for today, sorry for the late preview, I was out last night and got in late. Safe travels to all going to the game, especially given the storm on the horizon.