Malmö vs Rangers match preview: Vanquishing old foes

Morning all, I've returned from my holiday in sunny Bari and I'm writing this in familiar surroundings while it rains, somethings never change.

It's a return to Europa action for Rangers as they talk on Malmo away in Sweden. Even if it wasn't for Malmo's club account's inflammatory tweet, we all remember how tough a fixture this is. Our record makes for grim reading, 3 losses and one draw, 2 of the 3 losses coming at Ibrox.

I was the home leg back in 2021, first European game with a capacity crowd since Covid, we were 2-1 down from the away leg, but had a crucial away goal. My friend Jack and I were crammed right up the top of the Club Deck, the atmosphere was incredible. Morelos put us one up and the roof came off. Malmo went down to 10 shortly after, it was all going Rangers way, we were gonna score another and finish them off.

But then, Balogun lost Antonio Colak in the box, and it was 1-1. Then quick as a flash, we conceded an identical goal from the future Rangers striker and had a mountain to climb. My biggest memory from this game is people leaving in the 70th minute and a guy standing up in our row shouting at every one of them. "THAT'S EMBARASSING" and "THAT'S A DISGRACE" and my personal favourite "AWAY TO CATCH THE JUVENILE TRAIN".

The score stayed as it was no matter how much we huffed and puffed and we limped out of the Champions League qualifying 3rd round, sounds quite familiar actually.

But tonight's game is a Europa League... league stage fixture, not sure that rolls off the tongue in the same way.

There's been much discussion of how tough our fixture list is for Europe this season. Given some of the games on the horizon, we are looking at this game as one of our most likely away games to get 3 points.

I think we all know the limitations of this squad by now. But my hope is that we see more from our burgeoning left sided partnership of Bajrami and Jefte in the coming weeks. Like everyone I want Bajrami to start over Lawrence. But given the news of yet another injury for Oscar Cortes, I think we can expect to see Phil continue with the set up of Bajrami on the left with Lawrence in the middle for the foreseeable.

I hope everyone enjoyed Stefan's write up of the game, it was good to get an analyst's perspective on how we play. He pointed out the variety on the left and I think that will be our biggest source of joy in tonight's game. My main concerns are the difference in opposition, if they will look to expose Bajramis lack of pace and the lack of Jefte given his suspension. I'd rather we were taking risks in our attacking play though, you don't get anywhere being stale and safe, we've seen far too much of that recently.

Given Lawrence will definitely start, I think we will need to start Barron and Diomande. I know Diomande has come under fire recently for his performances this season, but in Europe we need his quality on the ball, Sterling brings us legs but we've all seen him look a little lost at times in recent games (aside from the fact he will likely start at left back). We need someone who can hold the ball and help us progress up the park when under pressure, Dio takes risks, but there's no doubt he's trying to get it forward when he can.

Upfront Dessers will continue, although I think Igamane will have something to contribute given his ability to turn with the ball as we've already seen. Dessers need to be more secure in possession than we've seen this season, I think we know he can play that lone forward holding the ball up role, but his general play has been especially sloppy this season.

I was looking at Malmo's squad and was especially surprised to see Martin Olsson there, I can remember him playing for Blackburn when they were relegated from the Premier League in 2011/12. 36 now, hopefully he's still bang average.

I'm sure we've all seen Sam Lammers' goal last night at Old Trafford. Obviously this brought a lot of talk about how we misused him, didn't get appropriate money for him etc. This is a guy who has had 1 and a half good seasons in his career, both coming in the Eredivisie. So he's clearly got some kind of superpower that only activates on home soil (ignoring that he scored in England last night). I'd be surprised if a 3rd club made the mistake of taking him from the Netherlands, but then it might work for them.

John Gilligan spoke for the first time since the departure of John Bennett. He was keen to stress the need for patience for the fans when it comes to the manager. And mentioned the need to appoint a CEO as soon as possible. I don't think he said anything but what was expected, and it's very clear that the appointment of people who know football at the Board level, is extremely necessary.

Not much to report apart from that. Hoping we can kick off our Europa league campaign with a positive performance at the very least.