Barmy Hugh Keevins makes wild Rangers claim | OneFootball

So, let’s look in a bit more detail at barmy Hugh Keevins’ claim that Rangers are still title contenders following Malmo.

Now, barmy isn’t the notion that Rangers can win, it’s the notion the man had us liquidated a month ago and now he’s backing us for 56 rolls eyes.

But taking the notion of 56 seriously, do Rangers have any realistic chance?

Let’s face it, an epic result in Europe tends to give Rangers a big, big boost. Morally and financially, a win in Europe is a huge shot in the arm of the club and the fans. But there is a catch.

And it’s a big catch.

Rangers, for some reason, harking back to the days of Steven Gerrard, simply have an absolute Midas Touch fairy dust for the Europa League. The man struggled in his first season domestically, but in Europe Rangers punched way above their weight and could even have qualified for the KO stage.

Giovanni of course took us to Sevilla, and even Michael flipping Beale was able to get a win or two in the group stage.

Philippe Clement has continued that on, and has only lost a single Europa League match, his abysmally-managed return leg in the last 16 v Benfica.

So this club absolutely has a Midas touch in this competition, which means what?

Nothing domestically, unfortunately.

Rangers winning in Malmo doesn’t mean we’re going to bestride the SPL like a colossus, because Rangers soaring in Europe the past 5+ years never has meant that.

Yes, we did darn well in 55-winning 2021 to get to the last 16 where Slavia Praha proved too much for us, but Rangers doing well in Europe hasn’t meant automatically that our domestic campaign has shone.

In fact, often the opposite.

Rangers tend to be staggeringly good in the Europa League, well beyond what we really should be.

Unfortunately it doesn’t really correlate to anything on the domestic front.

So maybe Clement does finally have us clicking, but we’d await a lot more domestic wins before we even contemplated being contenders for 56 this season.

Would be lovely though.