Rapid Vienna’s crisis has certainly eased off in recent times, but Rangers should see them as vulnerable.
It wasn’t long ago that Rapid were in a dark, dark place. A 1-0 defeat in their Vienna derby had manager Gordan Djuricin under real pressure. The result led to supporters invading the pitch and making their anger known to him and the board.
It was an extremely sour note in Vienna’s slow start to the campaign. The nasty scenes on the pitch post-match was only ended when riot police had to come on and deal with the violence.
In a sense, it was as low as Vienna have shrunk in years. Now, they aren’t in as dark a place as they were a couple of weeks ago. So how have they responded since then?
Well, there’s no doubt the club are still feeling the pressure. Another defeat occurred in a 2-1 away loss at Red Bull Salzburg. It was a more excusable result given the fact that Salzburg are top of the Austrian league and sweeping all before them.
A 2-0 win over Spartak Moscow helped ease some of the pressure on Djuricin and his players. It was a thoroughly impressive and dominant performance from the Austrians, who may see Europe as a nice distraction from their domestic woes.
Mixed results but dodgy performances
Since the win over Moscow, they’ve been brought right back down to earth in their Austrian Cup match against Mattersburg in which they failed to impress once more, despite winning on penalties. Christoph Knasmullner’s first-half goal for Rapid was cancelled out by Marko Kvasina’s penalty.
Vienna failed to break down their Austrian Bundesliga opponents, however, and were forced to battle their way to a 5-4 penalty shootout success.
At the minute, Vienna are stumbling along the road. The crisis has been averted, but their football still isn’t impressing supporters. Their performances are failing to convince, and they still aren’t winning.
As has been said, they may view Europe as a nice distraction. Many sides in the past who have struggled with domestic woes have bounced back nicely in Europe. Rangers need to be wary of this kind of reaction when Rapid pitch up at Ibrox.
Defensively, they’ve shipped goals in each of their last eight matches in Austria. Going forward, they’ve scored in all of them too.
Vienna, at the moment, are averting a crisis just now by some close-calls. Rangers have a huge chance to pile the misery onto a side really struggling for form. It’s important Steven Gerrard knows this and hammers that fact into the players.
From the off, Rangers need to get in their faces and make it a battle. Get on the ball and make them have to work as hard as they’ve had to all season to get a result. Only then will we truly see what this Rapid Vienna side are made of.
