There is no such thing as an easy game in the Champions League, certainly when you haven’t played in the competition for over ten years there isn’t.
Union Saint-Gilloise represent an unknown quantity, no household names, no veterans of previous campaigns. A team that we should be very wary of.
A side that gets promoted to the top flight for the first time in years then goes tantalisingly close to winning the league at their first attempt has something about them and Giovanni van Bronckhorst will have to be at his tactical best for us to get the result that we want – something positive to take home to Ibrox.
What makes his task even harder is that he won’t be able to call on the services of Calvin Bassey, Filip Helander, Joe Aribo, Ianis Hagi, Ryan Kent, Alfredo Morelos or Kemar Roofe, all key players in previous campaigns and unavailable for various reasons and lengths ranging from a matter of days to permanent.
This creates opportunities for others though and Gio will pick an XI based on how he wants to set up and the tactics he wants to employ, this might seem like common sense but, despite the excitement, I can’t see Malik Tillman or Ridvan Yilmaz being thrown on from the start in a game of such magnitude.
There is still a core of the old guard available which, perhaps, is more important given that the game is away from home, even more important that the players make up most of the defence and midfield where a lot of the hard work will be done in an attempt to dictate the tempo of the game.
We know who we will play in the final play-off round if we beat the Belgians over two legs but, as we found to our cost last season, nothing should ever be taken for granted at this level.