IT IS ALL of eight years since Rangers last played FBK Kaunas. Yet over-familiarity could prove to be an enemy of the Ibrox side when they play host the Lithuanians on Wednesday. In losing the UEFA Cup final, the European adventures of Walter Smith's side fell short of earning them made-men status. But it left them marked men.
Every team on the continent will be acutely aware that Smith employs a suffocating 4-5-1 system to choke the life out of opponents. Reason enough to have Rangers breathing a little uneasily over a Champions League qualifier that will force them to e
xpand their lungs for a first competitive encounter against a team who have been doing that for half a season.
"It is definitely a factor that we are not going to catch anybody cold this season," Smith admits. "That puts extra onus on us in terms of upping our performance, if we can. I have been making people aware of that since we started back."
Even sub-standard performances should be sufficient to elbow out Vladimir Romanov's other team, and set up a more exacting third qualifying-round tie that will stand between Rangers and the must-have group stage moolah. And while opponents will draw on the Ibrox side's recent Europe experiences, so can Smith.
Owing to the presence of a 25-year-old Brazilian striker, Rafael Ledesma, in their ranks, he considers the challenge Kaunas present as greater than the one posed at the same stage of the competition last year by Zeta, who in the earlier round edged out the Lithuanians in freakish circumstances.
"Ledesma fits the identi-kit of a Brazilian," Smith says. "He gives them that bit of something different and takes the free-kicks, which are a big part of their game because of their physical presence and the delivery they are able to put on them. We have had Kaunas watched in four matches now and, no disrespect to Zeta, but anyone who saw the games between them last year would testify that Kaunas were by far the better team. It was an absolutely incredible game in Kaunas. They could have had seven or eight goals only to lose an away goal and go out in the last minute.
"I always felt they were a better side than Zeta and they have the benefit of being in-season. Zeta, like ourselves, were more or less starting theirs. But these are the things we have had to prepare for in or pre-season build up and we're ready for it now."
Even if the timing of such a fundamentally finance-and-future shaping a tie is rotten, Smith might be relieved a mumpathon of a pre-season is over. Ibrox punters, clearly in a state of manic agitation over the league being lost on the last day, seem determined to distress devilishly over everything. Kenny Miller was declared Beelzebub incarnate, and each, typically, unremarkable friendly performance was treated as if pushing the club ever closer to the bad fire.
Rangers may be decidedly limited. Around £6m-worth of new player in the form of front men Kyle Lafferty, Andrius Velicka and Miller will not alter that. But, even deprived of injured captain Barry Ferguson and having failed to sign Steve Davis, they are sure to retain a niggardly ability to pick their way through football matches. And with forwards likely to be selected on the flanks in their midfield five, they might just be more expansive than was true in the latter months of last season.
The match-up with Kaunas will be the seventh consecutive two-legged Europe tie in which Rangers have played at home first. And even without being expansive, the Ibrox side demonstrated they were dab hands at prevailing in such circumstances.
"It is an incredible run we are having at the present moment and our team has gained experience of that so we hope it stands us in good stead," Smith says. "But you can only tell afterwards whether experience has been a benefit or not.
"The importance of the Kaunas game we can't shy away from. It is vital for the club in all senses. You can't shield players from the pressure but they don't worry about the financial aspect; they just want to play in the Champions League. Chairmen, directors, managers and coaches – we all think about the other aspects. Players don't really get caught up in that. They just want to play at the very top level and that is where the knock-out rounds can take us."
If Rangers were to "do an Artmedia" and be jettisoned from the Champions League before the Uefa Cup parachute kicks-in, as happened to Celtic against the Slovak side three years ago, the consequences would be far more severe than those then suffered by their ancient adversaries.
In drawing revenue from a season ticket holder base 10,000 higher than Rangers, Celtic run a more naturally profitable operation. In May, Ibrox owner David Murray spoke of profits being banked for the purposes of debt reduction, not a driver across the city. Only participation in the £10m-earning group stages of the Champions League allows the Glasgow clubs to run at a surplus. If Smith's men do not achieve this in the next month, it naturally follows the playing side will require to be scaled down... just as Rangers strain to remain competitive against rivals currently enjoying their longest run of title success in more than three decades. The Ibrox men must not allow Kaunas' familiarity with them to breed a contempt for their ambitions.
The full article contains 948 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
