McLeish fate may depend on victory in Europe for Rangers

Lisa Gray
Tuesday 01 November 2005 01:00 GMT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

The trip to Slovakia provides welcome respite from the turmoil of their Scottish Premier League campaign, which sees the champions languishing in fourth place and 10 points adrift of both Celtic and Hearts.

Alex McLeish, the manager, has already said he will not resign from a post he will have held for four years in December - if he does, in fact, survive that long. A win against Artmedia would buy him moretime, Prso believes: "Everyone has to do a little bit more and I think everything will be OK."

The Champions' League campaign had been the one highlight of what has been a difficult season. Rangers could not have asked for a better start, taking maximum points from the opener against Porto thanks to a battling 3-2 win.

However, Artmedia - conquerors of Celtic in the qualifying rounds - upset things last month when they held Rangers to a goalless draw at Ibrox. It was a game Rangers were expected to win and they head into tonight's meeting knowing they need to return to Glasgow with the three points.

No Scottish club has reached the knock-out stages of the Champions' League in its current form, but Prso believes Rangers can do just that."We know we still have a chance to qualify for the next round. We are quite confident we can do that."

The defender Jose-Karl Pierre-Fanfan will miss the game with a hamstring problem, but Sotirios Kyrgiakos, Julien Rodriguez and Francis Jeffers are all fit and available if needed.

Rangers (from): Waterreus, Klos, Robinson, Bernard, Ricksen, Andrews, Kyrgiakos, Malcolm, Rodriguez, Hutton, Ferguson, A Rae, Ricksen, Murray, Namouchi, Hemdani, Thompson, Jeffers, Prso, Lovenkrands, McCormack.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in