WHEN Rangers travel to Lisbon to face Benfica tonight, Steven Gerrard will be presented with one of the greatest challenges he has faced since taking the reins at Ibrox a little over two years ago. His side have produced some eye-catching results on the continent in the previous two campaigns but the team that they will meet in the Portuguese capital are one with perhaps the greatest pedigree of them all.

With two wins out of two in the group stages so far – a 4-2 victory over Lech Poznan was followed up with a 3-0 success at home to Standard Liege on matchday two – and a relatively strong start to their domestic season, Gerrard and his players will be up against a team who are in form and pose a real threat to the Premiership league leaders.

Rangers can, however, take heart from Benfica’s most recent performance, where relegation candidates Boavista stunned Jorge Jesus’ men with a comfortable 3-0 win.

Here, Herald and Times Sport digs into the numbers behind the Portuguese runners-up to see where their strengths lie – and where Benfica are vulnerable.

SHACKLE NUNEZ

The Uruguayan centre-forward is a new face at the Estadio da Luz, having joined from Almeria in the Spanish second tier over the summer for a fee of around £22 million, making Nunez the most expensive acquisition in the history of Liga Nos.

Nunez has hit the ground running in Lisbon and has even reportedly caught the attention of Barcelona with his recent displays and it isn’t difficult to see why the Catalan giants have been linked with a move for the striker. He spent just one year in Spain, scoring 16 goals in 30 league outings after turning out for Penarol in his homeland, and was rewarded with a maiden Uruguay call-up last year, coming off the bench against Peru and grabbing his nation’s equaliser with a header in his 15-minute cameo.

Nunez’s goalscoring exploits last season are naturally what immediately jump out when having a look at the 21-year-old’s statistics and while he has found the net four times in nine appearances since joining Benfica, it is perhaps his chance creation that Gerrard must be most wary of. His hat-trick against Poznan illustrated Nunez’s potency in front of goal but the fact he has five assists in his last four starts in the league – including two against Famalicao at the weekend before last – shows he can provide chances as well as convert them.

Nunez is fast, strong, effective in the air, has an encouraging goal return in Europe and has quickly become one of Jesus’ key players at the club in the space of a few months. If Rangers can keep the centre-forward quiet – not to mention his team-mates Gian-Luca Waldschmidt and Haris Seferovic, who have nine goals between them this season, or right winger Pizzi, who scored 18 and set up another 12 goals in the Portuguese top flight last term – they will do their chances of victory the world of good.

BEWARE OF TURNOVERS

The amount of focus and energy that coaches are devoting to pressing has increased in recent years, with the success of Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool in utilising an aggressive, high-tempo approach to win the ball back being replicated elsewhere after its efficacy has been repeatedly demonstrated.

Benfica are not immune to this sporting trend – one that has swept its way across the continent in much the same manner that Pep Guardiola’s possession-orientated style changed the way football was played in Europe and dominated football culture for years – and have proven to be highly adept at putting their opponents under pressure and regaining possession.

It can be difficult to quantify pressing from a statistical perspective, given the sheer number of variables involved in each turnover of possession, but one metric that can be helpful in this regard is Passes Per Defensive Action (PPDA) which measures how many passes a team’s opponents complete on average before losing the ball.

Benfica have a PPDA of 7.39 in the Portuguese top flight this season – a figure only bettered by their title rivals Porto (6.93) – and what this tells us is that Jesus instructs his team to win the ball back quickly when out of possession, and that Benfica like to harry their opponents. That figure has increased to an average of 10.3 in the Europa League this season, meaning that their continental opponents are generally afforded more time on the ball than their domestic ones, but this number is still relatively low compared to other sides in this year’s competition.

This means that Rangers will need to be composed in possession in the face of heavy pressure this evening, while the forwards must look to break beyond the Benfica defence and offer runs in behind to give Gerrard’s players the option of going long and striking their opponents on the counter when they commit men to the press. Boavista showed on Monday night that Benfica can become very vulnerable very quickly if you can work around their press and attack directly, and it is a strategy that Gerrard will surely be looking to replicate.

DEFENSIVE STRUCTURE CAN SEE RANGERS THROUGH

Beating the Benfica press is one thing but restricting chances when out of possession is another matter entirely. The Portuguese side are among the competition leaders for the average number of attempted passes per game in this year’s Europa League and only Arsenal (89.9% accuracy) move the ball about with more precision than Jesus’ men (89%).

Coming up against a side that like to control possession and play on the front foot, Gerrard will understandably be wary of the threat posed by tomorrow’s opponents. But the Rangers boss has shown consistently that his team have the correct structure to withstand teams who tend to dominate the ball.

The recent 2-0 win over Celtic at Parkhead was the latest example of Rangers’ superb positioning and defensive shape proving to be the decisive factor against a heavily-fancied opponent but there are other examples during Gerrard’s reign that spring to mind – the 1-0 win away to Braga, the 2-2 draw in Porto, the 1-0 win over Galatasaray – as matches where Rangers have congested space so effectively that their opponents have been unable to convert their possession into clear-cut scoring opportunities.

If the Rangers players can maintain their shape off the ball and block Benfica’s passing lanes then they have a great opportunity to frustrate their opponents. Jesus usually lines his players up in a 4-4-2 that structurally speaking, isn’t particularly adventurous or tactically sophisticated, which in turn plays into Gerrard’s hands. He and his players are used to this situation, and have a precise game plan as to how to effectively combat it – if they can replicate it again tonight, then the Rangers manager may just claim another major scalp in Europe.