In their second match of the Scottish season, Rangers have their home opener by hosting Hibernian at Ibrox.
In the Scottish opener at Ibrox, Rangers will face a tough test as they host Hibernian in front of the home crowd. Rangers won a nail-biter at Rugby Park against Kilmarnock last week and will be arriving fresh off of a brilliant outing in Europe to defeat Danish side Midtjylland 4-2 in Europa League qualifying.
Hibernian have looked solid so far in the young season, advancing comfortably through their cup matches and snatching a 1-0 victory last week over St. Mirren. After finishing 5th in the Premiership last season they are looking to build on that to try and get back into qualifying for European play.
This will also mark the second straight week that Rangers face a team that they struggled to dispatch last season as they managed just one win and three draws against Hibs last season. While Hibs are the sort of quality side that dropping some points to them shouldn’t be a huge surprise, just one victory in four is not going to get the job done.
While Hibernian is not likely to go into as deep a defensive box that many Scottish opponents will enter against Rangers, it will be interesting to see how Rangers look against another defensive opponent after a big breakout in Europe in a more wide-open match.
The popular pick is for Rangers to win a tightly contested match, which would be a fine result. Especially early in the season while the team is playing lots of games and still finding their comfort zone, the points are the most important thing. That said, if they can manage to dominate the match it would mark a nice build of momentum for the club off of the outing in Denmark.