Rangers face Hearts in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup at Hampden this weekend as Philippe Clement looks to get their season back on track.
A run that has seen just on league win in five leaves the manager with a tough task ahead of what is sure to be another tense affair.
With Rangers struggling in recent weeks, Hearts defender Stephen Kingsley reckons that an upset could be on the cards if they can replicate the performances of two other Scottish Premiership teams.
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Rangers to face a rampant Hearts?
Clement has to pick his squad up quickly given what is at stake and the Tynecastle outfit will be no pushovers despite a 5-0 win at Ibrox earlier this year.
Most of the other games have been competitive and a repeat wouldn’t be a surprise.
Rangers have won every encounter though and haven’t lost in 13 meetings between the two teams and Hearts haven’t had a clean sheet for eight games between the two sides.
Speaking to the Evening Times, Kingsley has explained why Hearts are right to fancy their chances:
“You analyse the games, see where they are not quite clicking and look to expose that. They are a massive team and they are going to look to rebound from this.
“We are in a cup competition so it’s going to be tough. We have looked at their games and we go in with full belief that we can hurt them as Ross County and Dundee have.”
Rangers have shown teams how to cause us problems
Kingsley is right.
Against Ross County and Dundee, it looked as though both teams had studied the tape from the shock Motherwell defeat and created their own template for success.
Rangers have struggled to break teams down of late and Philippe Clement has a lot to do to put this right.
Changing personnel doesn’t seem to make much of a difference either given that he has rotated his team in almost every game.
The biggest problem though has been that there has been a soft underbelly to the team.
Neither Ross County or Dundee had to work particularly hard to break us down, even if there were improvements at the Scot Foam Stadium in mid-week.
It would be a surprise if Steven Naismith doesn’t go with pace out wide to attack areas where Rangers have failed to cover when turning the ball over.
Other than Celtic, Rangers couldn’t have been drawn against tougher opposition and, with third place all but secured, Hearts will be up for the fight.
Hopefully, as Kingsley fears, Rangers click and rebound in the way that we all know they are capable of.
