“About the same as Benfica” – Rangers face £250M Lyon ‘mess’ | OneFootball

Having spent £150M in the summer, Lyon might be clear favourites on paper to overcome Rangers, with Philippe Clement having spent a fraction of that at £16M.

But big numbers mean nothing, with Rangers putting many expensively-assembled sides away in the past in this competition.

Leipzig, Feyenoord, and Borussia Dortmund are among the big scalps to have all been put to Rangers’ sword, with the credible Malmo victory also among those to have fallen.

Lyon is a strange one – as many outlets are reporting, they have signed big, but they are internally in as about as much a mess as Rangers are, and they are not flying high in the league either.

If Rangers wanted a good time to take this side on, now is probably it, although they might be ironically saying the same thing about us.

Ibrox Noise’s Derek has offered a few tactical angles on it, and in general the site has suggested it will be a tough one, and it will.

But Lyon are nowhere near as good as the Benfica of last season that we drew with, that we blew the home leg against, and while we respect any quality side, Lyon are no Real Madrid, albeit Lille quite enjoyed that one we think.

Lyon are a team in a bit of a mess, but they put away Olympiakos with the same ease Rangers did at Malmo, so it really is a toss of a coin in terms of general form.

Domestically they are a shambles, sitting a very poor 11th, and it may well be they are saving this season for the Europa League.

They’ve spent big this summer and aren’t seeing a return on that at all yet in the league.

As for the Benfica angle, they were a polished team but Rangers had the edge, and blew it every single time, either by ‘bad luck’ or by bad management.

And they’re a much better team than Lyon, by a significant way. They have a value of £330M in their squad, Lyon were around £130M before they pumped that £150M into their unit this summer (they only made about £30M from selling players).

So we don’t exactly agree with Philippe Clement’s assertion that Lyon are about the same as Benfica, we feel like he literally plucked that comparison out of the air.

But the point?

If we get Europa Rangers, Thursday Rangers, we might just get a very nice result indeed.