LMSL

Photo courtesy Bornaz Sebastian's Flickr account

Rangers striker Kenny Miller told reporters this week that it’s win-or-bust time for the Scottish champion as it faces Romanian upstart Unirea Urziceni in the UEFA Champions League on Wednesday evening.

He wasn’t wrong in his assessment, of course, but the following would’ve been not only more forthcoming but also more honest: Anything but a win in Bucharest, and it becomes damage-control time for the Scots.

Rangers currently sits bottom of Group G with one point from a possible nine going into the club’s rematch against Unirea, a team that hammered Miller and his teammates, 4-1, at Rangers’s Ibrox ground a fortnight ago.  On top of that, the Teddy Bears’ only point in this season’s Champions League campaign came all the way back on Sept. 16 – a 1-1 stalemate away to VfB Stuttgart – so a loss in Romania on Wednesday would likely kill any remaining hope the Scots might have of advancing into the knockout phase of the competition.

Manager Walter Smith and his personnel at Rangers have known since learning of its Champions League group draw that winning on Wednesday in Romania is going to be a difficult task, though, and it’s being made all the more tricky because of the incentive that an Unirea win would have for the host side.

Unirea’s fans will have to travel about 32 miles down to the Stadionul Steaua in Bucharest for the game – Unirea’s home ground, the 7,000-seat Stadionul Tineretului in Urziceni, seats approximately 20,000 fewer fans than Steaua Bucureşti’s stadium can – but a second win over Rangers in two weeks would be huge for the Romanian minnow, especially as it would open up a six-point gap between the two teams in the Group G table with two matchdays remaining.

The blue half of Glasgow would then have a very big problem on its hands, and it may take some doing to even lock down a third-place finish in what’s been a surprisingly competitive group, thus at least guaranteeing Rangers a place in the last 32 of the UEFA Europa League, Europe’s second-tier continental club tournament.  A fourth-place finish in the group, of course, would mean the end of the club’s European campaign for this season altogether.

Stuttgart, Rangers’s closet group rival at present, is away to first-place Sevilla on Wednesday, and a win for the hosts there would essentially wrap up the group for the Andalusians, as they would only have Unirea away and Rangers – whom the Spaniards beat 4-1 in Glasgow on Sept. 29 – at home for Sevilla’s final two group fixtures.  Rangers does get Stuttgart at home in two weeks’ time, but the Scots will have first have to pick up points in a hostile environment in Wednesday if Smith and his players want Nov. 24’s game against their German rivals to matter.

“It probably would be all over if we get beaten (in Bucharest),” Miller told reporters. “We know what’s at stake.

“No matter what the form is going into this game, we’ve got to go and get the three points.”

Truer words have rarely come from anyone within the Rangers camp, but even if the Scots come away with Romania on Wednesday with a win, Miller and his compatriots will need to keep one other thing in mind: Three points from the final three group games might not be enough.

Matthew Semisch