Rangers vs Kilmarnock preview: The (chair)Man Who Sold the World

Afternoon all, Rangers take on Kilmarnock at Ibrox tonight. Like most fans I'm not currently very excited for the game, but let's see if that builds (it won't).

The first big bit of news is that despite many reports last week that the move was basically done, Malcolm Offord will not be Rangers new chairman as it stands. I think given the recent appointment of Patrick Stewart as CEO and the heavily rumoured arrival of Offord, some had started to look forward to some decent appointments at the top level and what change we could see at the club.

However this news feels like a real slap in the face, at the end of the day if someone is interested and changes their mind there's not much Rangers can do about that. And I think in normal circumstances we'd just accept this and look ahead, but given the general mismanagement of the club at the moment, it really feels like another case of the club dropping the ball with a big appointment.

Given the upcoming AGM it's very obvious that the club wanted as close to a full compliment of senior figures as they could get. I imagine Offord not taking the job will put the club under a fair bit of scrutiny. According to the piece on the Rangers Review, the club still expect a high profile appointment for the role. I hope we see some good news on that front soon because the last thing we need is more uncertainty around the the football side of the club.

That brings us nicely to tonight's fixture. We know Kilmarnock by now, and we know Derek McInnes teams too. Very organised in a 442 shape, low to mid block, lots of physical play in midfield and the backline, keen to go long and then bring their technical players like Armstrong and Watson into play.

From our perspective we need to try take our slightly improved endeavour from the weekend into this game. I want Hagi to keep his place and hopefully we see more of Igamane upfront. Hagi has shown in the past he can be a great tool for making the breakthrough against deep blocks, his great winning goals against St Johnstone and Hibs in 2020/21 and 2019/20 come to mind. But his eagerness to take up a variety of positions in midfield and the frontline will be crucial tonight. There's also very much a slowly burgeoning partnership between Hagi and Bajrami, players with a lot of technical ability tend to understand each other and there's been a few signs that they are starting to find each other in good positions more.

I've seen suggestions that we could go a bit top heavy in the line-up by omitting Barron and letting Raskin patrol in-front of the defence himself. Perhaps going for Danilo upfront alongside Igamane in a 4132, I think it's hard because our central midfield options are limited. Diomande could come in and help us push higher up, but he's not exactly been pulling up trees in the league recently.

In spite of all this wishful thinking I imagine we will see Sunday's line up again, maybe with Balogun coming back in. My only other thought is he might see tonight as a game to start Ridvan to get him closer to full match sharpness, even given our struggles against these opponents.

I'm not sure what to expect tonight, but I bet it's going to be something stale and boring. Have a good day everyone.