Rangers vs Aberdeen preview: 2nd place shootout

Morning all, Rangers are back in action tonight taking on Aberdeen at Ibrox. Games are really coming in thick and fast at the moment. Celtic dropped points last night, but it almost doesn't bear mentioning given how far off the top we are currently.

The game today represents a chance for us to put our stamp on second place. Aberdeen have been in truly dire form recently, but in terms of how they like to play I think they can still cause us a lot of issues. Especially if we look as vulnerable on turnovers as we did on Sunday. They've also already made moves to address problem areas this month with a few signings. We have made no such moves.

Our press was aggressive on Sunday, but it looked very disorganised at times. St Johnstone really lacked the quality/ambition to play through the gaps left due to 4 players committing to pressing the backline. Aberdeen under Thelin are built around exploiting these gaps and then committing players into attacking areas to make the risky passes count. They also "cheat" with the positioning of their forwards, leaving them high up the pitch to allow for greater threat in transition.

If we play with the same kind of sloppiness that caused us to give the ball away in the middle third so frequently against the Saints, the Dons will be more than able and willing to punish us.

So how does Clement look to counter this? Unfortunately his 'principles' don't allow for too much flexibility. But a simple tactical change would be to ask Hagi to shuffle across out of possession to form a midfield 3. This would allow for the front 3 to press aggressively and hopefully stop Diomande or Raskin from getting drawn too high up the pitch, and therefore exposed to Aberdeen's passes through the lines.

On the ball, given our set up and ways of playing, there's nothing that can really be tweaked to stop us giving the ball away. I'm confident Clement isn't asking the players to be sloppy on the ball, but there's no doubt that he's either asking them to play the ball into areas that put teammates under pressure. Or he's not given them enough of a structured build up and the sloppiness is brought on by indecision and confusion among individuals. I'm inclined to lean towards the second option given the general lack of structure across the pitch.

For the line-up, it seems Tavernier and Balogun are back in training. I'm particularly sick of watching Ridvan come inside and shoot, but he will be doing more defending than attacking tonight I'd think, so keeping him in for the moment is for the best given Tav won't be match sharp. We have to watch Balogun closely given his injury record this season, so it's probably best for Nsiala to continue as he hasn't done anything wrong since coming in.

No exciting news on transfers, the links to Lyall Cameron are heating up. We already know he would be a good signing so no point going into that again. I did read that Rangers are interested in Filip Benkovic who is available on a free, would certainly be an amusing signing, but his career has really nosedived since his loan at Celtic in 2019, so best left well alone.

Aside from that there's nothing much to report, hopefully we get another result at home tonight so we can stop worrying about letting second place slip. Have a good day everyone.