Better than Dortmund? Rangers face major test v Lyon | OneFootball

With our next match being against Lyon, we now step up to two levels.

In our last match, Malmo was a shadow of the team we played before.

Tomorrow, we face a Lyon that has substantially improved since we last played them; and that is sobering, because we have played Lyon twice before in Europe. In 2007 Lyon won 3-0 at Ibrox and in 2021 we lost 2-0 at Ibrox before drawing with Lyon 1-1 in Lyon, on match day 6, when we had an amazing game and scored both goals. Wright (yes Wright) scored for us, and Bassey scored a very solid own goal. Showing how much our team has changed, now only Hagi survives from that team, but Hagi (of course) is not in our current European squad.

Their new manager, Pierre Sage, loves fast attacking football, but he does not forget to defend. In fact, the first thing he worked on, when he took over the managerial role at Lyon, was to create a strong defensive spine in his team.

Tactically, Lyon is where Clement is trying to take Rangers. As we all know, Rangers are now undergoing a massive transition. Lyon did this last year. So, to be honest, with Lyon being one year ahead of us, this is going to be a very tough game, but Lyon are not invincible.

In this game we need to be almost perfect in working the ball out from the back with fast accurate passes. That, thankfully, is already something we have shown we can do. It is just the accurate passes in the final phase that is currently our problem; and we still lack the speed to fully support the frontline in Clement’s style of play.

For comparison, yesterday, Dortmund gave Celtic a perfect masterclass in how to rapidly transition from defense to attack, with their midfielders absolutely busting a gut to rapidly catch up with strikers, and to then give them the option to either pass or to take a shot themselves.

It would be great if we do the same against Lyon. In fact we have done it before in Europe, with our youngest (youth) players often showing the greatest willingness to sprint the entire length of the field to catch up with an attack.

Lyon are weak against opponents that run with the ball, but then change quickly to passing the ball through the lines. If you take more than 5 or 6 steps, Lyon is trained to swarm the player who has the ball. These tactics, which work well against most teams, have one major weakness, and that is it creates a problem when their entire team is drawn towards the ball. This leaves them open in other areas of the park, which stronger teams often take routine advantage of.

With a high defensive line, they are also open to the ball being lobbed over the top, with their defensive line being often parked too far up the field.

On the attacking side of the equation, they are not as strong as Dortmund, but they do have their unfair share of very good players. So, the difference between Lyon and Dortmund is not vast; and if you give them the chance, they will absolutely pack Rangers’ penalty box. If they do this, it is very important to not bring back the entire team, but to have some of our players parked up field, so that we can rapidly counter-attack. Do that two or three times, and Lyon will rapidly transition away from loading the box, and they will start to show us more respect.

Another area to watch is during the attack phase they like to draw their players close together, and then rapidly transition the ball across the field to an open player, who will often try to ghost into the penalty box on the other side of the park… Here James Tavernier has to be really alert, and watch for these late runs into the box. However, again this can also be used against them, because when they are closely packed together, if they do lose the ball, they are often left open for very quick counter-attacks. In this game it is positional play that is going to determine who wins, and who loses.

Despite Lyon being much faster than Malmo, if we can transfer the ball quickly from one side of the field to the other side, and also employ our midfield to pierce their defensive lines with accurate final passes, they do rapidly become stretched and in these situations they do start to panic.

Finally, in our side, I would really like to see our team enjoying themselves. Just now I feel our strikers are perhaps trying too hard, when what they really need to do is have the confidence to just take a shot and see what happens. Sometimes goalies will drop the ball, and goals can be scored from deflections.

Just now, far too often our strikers kick themselves for missing, and are starting to overthink and over-pass the ball in the final third, when in truth they should be happy that they have already done the hard part and they got themselves in the position to shoot. So, just shoot and see what happens. That is what Dortmund did to Celtic, and god was it so enjoyable.

Sorry I couldn’t resist that….