Friday, March 29, 2024

Prediction: Rangers vs Motherwell

Veselin Trajkovic in Free Soccer Predictions 27 Dec 2022

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Verdict: Total goals over 3.5

Best odds: 11/8

Bookmaker: Betfair

Rangers are set to welcome Motherwell to the Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow on Wednesday evening, in what will be a match withing the 19th round of the Scottish Premiership, though Motherwell have a game in hand on a number of teams in the league.

Rangers

The season hasn’t exactly gone well for Rangers this term. As things stand at the moment, they are second in the table with 42 points, nine less than Celtic at the top, and despite the fine form they’ve been showing recently, it doesn’t seem they’ll be able to catch up with their arch-rivals this term.

The Gers finished their Champions League campaign for the season sitting at the bottom of Group A without a single point, having lost all six matches against Napoli, Liverpool and Ajax.

The club obviously felt the time for a change in the dugout had come and at the end of November, they sacked Giovanni van Bronckhorst from the job and appointed former Queens Park Rangers boss Michael Beale a week later.

Things have been looking up since. Their last six competitive matches saw Rangers win four and draw one after losing 2-1 away to St. Johnstone. They beat Hearts 1-0 at home, played a 1-1 draw away to St. Mirren, beat Hibernian 3-2 at home, beat Aberdeen away by 2-3, and eventually beat Ross County away by 0-1. Squeezed in the middle of that run, Rangers beat Bayer Leverkusen 3-0 in a club friendly during the World Cup.

Team News

Beale said some of his players are still tired after the Ross County triumph, but he’s still expected to name an unchanged starting XI, and the only player missing right now is Borna Barisic. The left-back is still resting after earning the bronze medal with Croatia at the World Cup. His place is likely to be taken by Adam Devine again.

Motherwell

Motherwell are currently ninth (from 12 teams), and with just 18 points from the previous 17 matches, they won’t be too happy with what they’ve done so far either. Their last-six run consists of a single triumph, two draws and three defeats. In all those games, they only managed to beat a 10-men Dundee United 0-1 away, while losing 1-2 away to Aberdeen, 3-2 away to Hearts, and 1-2 at home against Celtic, as well as drawing 1-1 away to St. Johnstone and 2-2 at home against Kilmarnock.

It will be some comfort for Steven Hammel and his men that those draws were the last two games played, though they will have felt them very differently after coming back from a goal down against St. Johnstone and wasting a 2-0 lead against Kilmarnock, who scored twice after losing Alan Power to a red card in the 68th minute.

Team News

Much like Beale, Hammel is likely to tinker with his team as little as possible for this match and it should be a good opportunity for the players to make amends for the Kilmarnock fiasco.

But if any changes are made, it’ll likely be Dean Cornelius and Ross Tierney coming into the lineup to provide some freshness in the middle of the park.

Conclusion

With all due respect to Motherwell, anything by a convincing Rangers triumph would obviously be a great surprise. There should be plenty of goals.

Verdict: Total goals over 3.5

Best odds: 11/8

Bookmaker: Betfair

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Veselin Trajkovic


Vesko is a football writer that likes to observe the game for what it is, focusing on teams, players and their roles, formations, tactics, rather than stats. He follows the English Premier League closely, Liverpool FC in particular. His articles have been published on seven different football blogs.

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