Predicting who Steven Gerrard will pick in his starting XI has become near on impossible over the last couple of the months, with the squad depth allowing the gaffer to rotate his midfield and attack on a game-by-game basis.
Rangers will be out to make up for dropping two points in Portugal and with Benfica missing as many as eight players, including Darwin Nunez, it is a great opportunity to secure safe and early passage to the knockout stages.
Gerrard’s pre-match presser revealed little other than that the fixture has come too early for Bongani Zungu and that the artificial surface at the Falkirk Stadium could delay his return until next week, the other notable absentee is Ryan Jack, with the Scotland midfielder being given until the last minute to prove his fitness.
It may be that Jack sat this one out anyway with Glen Kamara and Steven Davis starting on the bench against Aberdeen at the weekend with one of Joe Aribo or Scott Arfield joining them – unless one of the more attack minded players lines up as part of the front three, as we have seen before.
This is the team I would go with in a fixture that could play an important role over the next few weeks, in terms of team selection and rotation, particularly if the result in the Lech Poznan and Standard Liege game goes our way.
The gaffer has already said that he will send his team out to “put the foot down” with a manageable tie against Falkirk at the weekend, although he will obviously have to respect the quality of opposition, sending out the same sort of attacking line-up as the one that swept aside Aberdeen could lead to a basketball game and the lack of game control that we usually aspire to.
The biggest question marks for me are in the centre of defence and midfield, personally I’d bring Filip Helander back in because he played in the first game and knows the opposition, yes, he made a couple of errors but he was also desperately unlucky – that he will be keen to make amends should see the risk of a repeat eliminated, he has also been exceptional all season.
In midfield I’d give Arfield the nod, then give him the weekend off against Falkirk, plastic pitches are more suited to younger joints and his experience could be crucial tonight, for the same reason I’d start Kemar Roofe and Alfredo Morelos. If we can’t beat Falkirk with Cedric Itten, Jermain Defoe and Ianis Hagi, something is far wrong.
Predicting the score is almost as hard as the team selection and the Rangers defence saved all it’s mistakes for one fixture in Lisbon, I’d be surprised if they were to show similar lapses again, a 2-1 win for the home side and – hopefully – into the last 32.