One of the decisions Philippe Clement will have to make for the trip up to Aberdeen is who will pair Connor Goldson in the centre of Rangers defence.
The Gers boss has had almost a full squad to work with on the training ground during the international break and he will have appreciated the time to fine tune a team that was heading in the right direction.
He would have preferred to kick off this block of games at Ibrox, however, Philippe Clement has a two-horse race for Rangers left-sided centre-back.
Philippe Clement has defence decision to make for Rangers
In the disastrous defeat at home that saw the end of Michael Beale’s tenure, Ben Davies and Ridvan Yilmaz made up the left-hand side of defence.
And for all that the pair weren’t to blame specifically for the goals that were lost, replacing them could make a difference.
Two of the three goals were conceded via set plays either first or second phase, the third was a long ball hit to Rangers left-hand side of defence.
Simply by putting the more aggressive Leon Balogun alongside Connor Goldson, Philippe Clement can strengthen the area of the pitch that Aberdeen are most likely to target.
Connor Goldson and James Tavernier are consistently good in the air defensively and, as a team that likes to play direct, Barry Robson will instruct his free kick takers and defenders to avoid this side of the pitch when going long.
One other strength is that Leon Balogun is as good a man marker as we have and, given how reliant they are on Gers-linked Bojan Miovski, it makes sense to put the powerful Nigerian onto the North Macedonian international striker.
It’s a tactic that has worked with other direct teams and Philippe Clement has shown that he is willing to rotate the position depending on who Rangers opponents are.
Rarely do Rangers managers get two weeks to prepare for a league game with an almost fully available starting XI, hopefully, this one can get the sort of result that Celtic did at Parkhead when Aberdeen provided as much resistance as a gentle breeze.
