Rangers vs Steaua Bucharest preview: Get back on track as best we can

Morning all, Rangers take on the Romanian side Steaua Bucharest at Ibrox tonight. It's fair to say that the mood around the club is at a low ebb at the moment. Sunday's loss felt like a serious kick in the teeth and a real sign that we are far from where we want and need to be this season.

A home fixture in the Europa League should be a chance to get back to winning ways. But I think for the fans, the most important thing will be the performance, a dry 1-0 win with no real drive will satisfy nobody. I'm not expecting our normal defiant European home atmosphere either, this is a game where the players will need to get the fans going, not the other way round.

There is a big chance for the mood in the ground to turn very toxic, if Steaua took the lead, I'd expect that could almost be that. We know our powers of recovery aren't incredible at the best of times under Phil, but the challenge of coming back in a stadium full of your own fans essentially angry at you, is another level.

I think Sunday showed us that one of the characteristics missing at the moment is that ability to never know when you're beaten. When we've fallen behind against Celtic and Kilmarnock this season, I don't think anyone thought we could even equalise. Against Lyon in our last home game it was a major surprise when Lawrence equalised, although it proved to be a false dawn. It wasn't that long ago, under Gerrard and then Gio, that we had a habit of going 1 down and then fighting back to win. With this team and Manager, I just don't see that happening

So to the line-up, there's been much discussion around the formation and how Phil can change it to get us going. I don't want to burst anyone's bubble with that, but I don't see him actually changing the system. From a hypothetical perspective, I think something like Gerrard's system could work in this team, but we'd need to play Kasanwirjo over Tav given the latter's decrepit physical state. We do have players who could function well in the front 3, Igamane and Cerny would be a good fit as the forwards, with Bajrami in the Aribo role as a creator. Raskin behind Diomande and Barron would function as a midfield 3 I think. But it's worth remembering that switching to a specific system like that can't be done on a whim, and it could be tough to suddenly rely so heavily on our full backs again.

I don't even really see Clement moving away from Dessers upfront, as much as the forward line is crying out for some kind of change.

It's hard to feel super optimistic for tonight, and I'm worried about our ability to get a result in almost any fixture now. I don't know if we are at that stage yet, but I was at Pedro Caixinha's last fixture as Rangers manager, Kilmarnock at home in 2017. It was really cold, Jason Holt put us one nil up, we toiled for the rest of the game and eventually won a penalty, Ryan Jack was sent off as we waited for the penalty to be taken, Candeias' penalty was saved and then to cap it off Chris Burke equalised late on. It felt very flat, the fans were pretty much done with Pedro before then, but that result made his position untenable.

I don't know if we are that low yet, but it feels like we are getting there, if we lost tonight I'm not sure Clement would even be sacked, given the length of his deal.

So instead I'll tune in tonight, hoping for some kind of change, desperately, trying to hold the belief that Clement will suddenly see what needs to be done and do it. And when you lay it all out like that, it's easy to see why I'm not very optimistic. Try and enjoy the game everyone, have a good day.