RANGERS will go top of the league this evening if they can beat Partick Thistle by four goals and that is something that will give Pedro Caixinha further heart after his team’s recent mini-revival.
Having put three past Ross County and then four against Dundee in their last two matches, their confidence should be sky-high.
Those, however, were two matches against struggling teams they would have been expected to win. The real tests will come when they face sides further up the table like St Johnstone, Celtic and Aberdeen.
In their two games so far against opposition I expect to finish in the top half of the table come May, they only drew with Hearts and lost to Hibs. So the real challenges are still to come. Thistle finished in the top six last year but have endured a wretched start to this campaign, with just one point from their first five league games.
It’s their worst opening since the early 1980s, and they are winless in 11 games going back to last season. So their form is not the best, to say the least. Pointedly they have also not beaten Rangers since 1993. That is a record they will be desperate to bring to an end although they came agonisingly close twice last season. In both their home games they led the Ibrox side with 10 minutes to go only to concede two goals late on each time.
If you’re a Thistle fan, that’s the sort of thing that must make you wonder if it’s just not meant to be. Alan Archibald and his players, then, will be out for revenge tonight and will also be fully determined to finally land their first win of the season.
They can hopefully take some heart from the way they turned it around last term.
At this point last year they were only on four points after the same amount of games. So they are only one win away from getting back on track. There’s no need for panic just yet. Archibald is proving himself to be a top manager in the Scottish game and I’m sure things will come good for Thistle soon.
It will be difficult, though, to land that first victory tonight against a resurgent Rangers who will be looking to make it three wins on the bounce.
They are scoring freely and their performance last Saturday against Dundee was more like what you would expect from a Rangers team as they won convincingly at home.
They had 10 shots on goal in that game which was the same tally as in their four previous matches combined. It shows they are starting to create – and take – a lot more opportunities.
Alfredo Morelos has been impressive so far and now has five goals from five games. He’s already talking about getting 25 for the campaign and in this form you wouldn’t bet against him doing that. I also thought Daniel Candeias had his best game for Rangers last weekend.
As a creative force he set up Josh Windass for his goal and also put in three or four other telling crosses during the match.
He’s starting to grow into that right wing position really well. Both centre halves look comfortable as do Graham Dorrans and Ryan Jack in the middle of the park.
So Rangers are finally building up a bit of momentum which they hope will stand them in good stead going into the Old Firm game next Saturday. They play Thistle twice before then – tonight in the league and again on Tuesday in the Betfred Cup – and if they can both of those it will leave them in good shape for taking on Celtic the following Saturday.
A win tonight would take them level with Brendan Rodgers’ side – even if only for a day – and that is another sign of progress, although they can only be properly judged once they’ve played more games against the teams around them in the table. I’m not also convinced Caixinha can play this flat midfield four against better teams, including Celtic who will effectively have five men in there up against them. Niko Kranjcar isn’t mobile enough to play wide left, while there doesn’t seem a natural fit for Carlos Pena within this system as Dorrans and Jack aren’t going to be dropped on current form.
So it will be interesting to see if the manager deviates from his preferred set-up as I think this midfield will be overrun in an Old Firm game. I think you really need to play a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-3-3 so you have that extra man in there to compete with Celtic. That is something for Caixinha to think about next week. For now he has to focus on trying to achieve back-to-back wins over Thistle and just keep gradually building momentum.
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