Union Men

The league phase of the Europa League is the last of the three to come to an end tonight and, like Celtic yesterday, Rangers are in the great position of having already qualified for the knockout phase. That’s despite the 2-1 defeat away to Manchester United last week.

It’s not immediately obvious that this is the case though! Rangers are currently in thirteenth place on eleven points with a +5 goal difference. Porto in twenty fifth place can still catch Rangers by beating Maccabi Tel Aviv and overturning the goal difference in the process – they have eight points and a +1 goal difference. FC Twente in twenty sixth place are four points behind Rangers so can’t catch them. So they don’t even factor into the equation here.

You have to look at what’s in between Rangers and Porto to really see where the guarantee happens. AZ Alkmaar, also on eleven points but with a +1 goal difference, would have to narrowly lose to Ferencvaros, who are on nine points, but in a way that they’d both finish above Rangers. Rangers would have to lose heavily tonight so that’s still technically possible, so let’s keep going!

Union St Gilloise, Rangers opponents for tonight, would obviously go above Rangers with that big win, so next in the table is Ajax who are on ten points. They host Galatasaray who are ahead of Rangers, so a simple Ajax win would move them ahead here. Next are PAOK Thessaloniki and Real Sociedad who both face each other. But okay, if that’s a draw and Rangers have suffered that heavy defeat then yes they can both go ahead of Rangers as well.

Then we get to Midjtylland who are also only a point behind Rangers. They face twenty second placed Fenerbahce who are two points behind Rangers. And here we have it, because Fenerbahce need to win to overtake Rangers which would mean Midjtylland would have lost and so couldn’t overtake Rangers.

Just to complete this, Elfsborg are away to Tottenham and would need to win to go above Rangers (or a draw and an even bigger goal difference swing than I’ve mentioned so far), Roma would need to beat Frankfurt, and Besiktas would have to beat FC Twente. So if all of that happened, including the hammering of Rangers tonight, the absolute worst they could finish is still twenty fourth.

But that’s highly unlikely. In the other direction, Rangers can still mathematically reach the top eight. FCSB are three points ahead of Rangers, as are Anderlecht, Tottenham and Lyon. Rangers need one or more of them to lose. Assuming only one of them loses, Rangers then need Galatasaray to lose to Ajax, Bodo/Glimt to lose to Nice, Viktoria Plzen failing to win against Athletic Bilbao, and Olympiakos failing to beat Qarabag. If more than one of the four teams on fourteen points loses, then you can drop off another one of those second group of four results. Basically, Rangers need five of the eight results to go in their favour. The only one where the goal difference matters is Lyon, because they have the +8 goal difference to the Rangers +5, and only Spurs can match that – which they then wouldn’t if they lose and Rangers win. Even Lyon losing and Rangers winning only needs another goal to level it out.

There is a final caveat to that where Rangers also have to hope that AZ Alkmaar don’t run up a cricket score as they could still overtake Rangers on goal difference. But Rangers are currently four goals better off than AZ, so that should be fine. But it would be annoying if everything went the way of Rangers only for AZ to have hammered Ferencvaros and nick it!

So whilst Celtic last night needed a string of results to go their way, it’s certainly a lot more favourable for Rangers tonight in their aim to finish in the top eight. All they can do is beat Union St Gilloise themselves tonight, and they’re at Ibrox so that definitely plays into their favour too, and see what happens elsewhere. Again, just like in the Champions League, the final league position will decide which one of two possible teams that will be the opponents in the knockout round. Right now, Rangers would be set to face either Midtyjlland or Elfsborg. But that is bound to change over the course of this evening.

As with last night, all games are kicking off at 8pm, the action from Ibrox is live on TNT Sports 3.

As mentioned earlier, Union St Gilloise are in a very similar position to Rangers. They’re on eleven points, they can’t finish outside the top twenty four, they can still make the top eight but need results to go in their favour, but they don’t have a nice home game to finish it off.

Also like Rangers, their campaign started in the Champions League third qualifying round where they lost out 4-1 on aggregate to Slavia Prague. They then dropped into the Europa League group stages and lost their opening game away to Fenerbahce. Caglar Soyuncu and a Christian Burgess own goal either side of a Kevin Mac Allister red card pretty much cost them in this game, with a Ross Sykes late goal coming as consolation.

They then had a goalless draw at home against Bodo/Glimt.

And only had one point out of nine after match day three when they lost 1-0 away to Midtyjlland. Ousmane Diao with the first half goal.

They picked up their second point with a 1-1 draw at home against Roma. Kevin Mac Allister cancelling out the Gianluca Mancini opener, both in the second half.

Union finally got their first win of the campaign on match day five, 1-0 away to FC Twente thanks to Mohammed Fuseini.

They then won 2-1 at home against Nice thanks to a last minute winner from Franjo Ivanovic. He had opened the scoring in the first half, only for Evann Guessand to level in first half injury time.

They made it three wins in a row last week when they beat Braga 2-1 at home. Amine El Ouazzani had given the visitors the lead in the first half, but two second half goals from Franjo Ivanovic gave the Belgians all three points and secured knockout football.

Now if the name seems familiar, it’s because Rangers faced Union St Gilloise as recently as 2022/23. In the third round of Champions League qualifying, Rangers came out on top 3-2 on aggregate. The game at Ibrox was the clincher, as Rangers came back from Belgium two goals down. But a James Tavernier penalty at the end of the first half was followed up in the second half by goals from Antonio Colak and Malik Tillman to turn things around and send Rangers through to the playoff round.

The record of Belgian sides at Ibrox makes for good reading for Rangers too. In the 1959/60 European Cup preliminary round, Anderlecht lost 5-2 to Rangers. Can’t find any footage of this one though.

Then in the 1961/62 European Cup quarter final, Rangers beat Standard Liege 2-0 at Ibrox. I can only find footage of the Belgian match though, and Standard won that one 4-1.

Club Brugge visited in the 1992/93 Champions League group stage, a game that Rangers won 2-1. Ian Durrant and Scott Nisbet with the Rangers goals.

Then in the 2020/21 Europa League group stage, Standard Liege were the visitors once more. This time Rangers won 3-2 on the night, Rangers twice coming from behind in the first half with goals from Connor Goldson and a James Tavernier penalty. Scott Arfield eventually scored the winner in the second half.

Later that same season, in the round of 32, Rangers faced Royal Antwerp. The 9-5 aggregate score saw Rangers progress, with the second leg at Ibrox itself finishing 5-2 to Rangers. Alfredo Morelos, Nathan Patterson, Ryan Kent and penalties from Borna Barisic and Cedric Itten all adding to the large scoreline that night.

The aforementioned Union St Gilloise visit was the most recent Belgian visit to Ibrox, so that’s six wins out of six. Even the only other visit by Union St Gilloise to Scotland was when they faced Hearts in the 1961/62 Inter Cities Fairs Cup, and that was a 2-0 win for Hearts at Tynecastle. Can’t find any footage of that one either, but certainly history is on the side of Rangers tonight.

Union St Gilloise go into this game tonight having beaten Beerschot 4-0 in the Belgian First Division on Sunday. They’re currently third in the league, eleven points behind leaders Genk after twenty three games. On Sunday they’ll host St Truiden.

Rangers also won at the weekend, 3-1 away to Dundee United on Sunday. That moved them to ten points behind leaders Celtic in the Scottish Premiership, albeit having played a game more. They host Ross County this coming Sunday.

Good luck to Rangers tonight! The mini draws for the knockout phase take place tomorrow. And when that’s done, there’s another set of mini-draws for the last sixteen after the knockout round, so we’ll come back to that in future blogs!