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“Injury nightmare” for Gers Euro opponents, boost for Gers?

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Rangers face a huge game on Sunday in the league-cup semi-final at Hampden, a competition that once belonged to us evading the Light Blues since 2011 when Walter Smith was in his last season as manager.

After that is, potentially, an even bigger game – in terms of finances anyway – a positive result against Sparta Prague could see us through to the next round of the Europa League, or into the play-offs at least.

As we have become accustomed to, The Daily Record has already started the propaganda about how easy a game this should be for us reporting that the Czech’s are going to have a “skeleton crew” for the game at Ibrox.

Guess how many players they have injured from the first game between the two sides….seven? Eight? No, a huge total of three players – Adam Hlozek, Ladislav Krejci, Jakub Pesek and Ondrej Celustka – that started the last fixture are going to be unavailable.

Using phrases like “injury nightmare” is a touch hyperbolic when you consider that for most of the season we have been without Ryan Kent, Ryan Jack and Filip Helander, three players who are among the first names on the team sheet every week.

It’s just the latest example of The Record trying to build Rangers up for a fall, you would think we would be used to it by now mind seeing as they do it every Europa League game.

Incidentally, in the first game when we lost 1-0, we had a centre-half pairing of Leon Balogun and Calvin Bassey, with no ALfredo Morelos, Ianis Hagi or Kent also in the line-up.

Sparta will have players missing, but they will also be facing a totally different animal when they come to Ibrox, with just Helander still on the sidelines, where they will face 50,000 fans booing them rather than the 10,000 kids that Glen Kamara had to endure.

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