Sunday serves up the second of two FA Cup semi-finals as Rangers take on Hearts at Hampden Park.
Second Scottish Semi
In has been a week to forget for Rangers and now they must pick themselves up in a bid to stop their season completely derailing.
Hitting The Skids
After Rabbi Montondo’s late equaliser at the expense of Celtic, it looked as if Rangers would eventually take top spot in the Scottish Premiership before the end of season split. All they then had to do was navigate past struggling Ross County and finally play Dundee at Dens Park.
Two wins from two and the Ibrox outfit would go into the Scottish Cup weekend sitting pretty in the league. Unfortunately for Philippe Clement’s men, they did not even earn two points from the next two matches.
A shocking performance lead to a shocking defeat in Dingwall and with Ross County racing into a 3-1 lead, James Tavernier’s late penalty late on would only go on to halve the deficit. Not only that, but Rangers would cede ground to Celtic in this season’s title race.
While the ground in Dundee has been a rather pertinent topic in recent weeks and with the rain already postponing the ‘Gers trip twice before at short notice, the clash between the two was finally given the greenlight on Wednesday.
With that said, Rangers supporters may have wished for further delay and with the hosts managing to grind out a goalless draw, it puts the blue half of Glasgow three points behind their nearest rivals and also with a lesser goal difference.
Disaster before the end of season split gets underway and disaster that could open the door for Hearts on Sunday. The Tynecastle outfit have all but secured their second third-place league finish in three seasons and will now look to appear in their second cup final during the same period.
The 2022 final saw Hearts lose to Sunday’s opponents and when looking at the this season’s head-to-heads in the Scottish Premiership, the Jam Tarts have had to make do with being on the losing side each time.
Not the trio of results that manager Steven Naismith would have want to see recorded and a measure of the gap that the Edinburgh-based side still need to bridge if they are to seriously challenge their Glasgow counterparts on a regular basis.
With that said, there is no need for regularity at the weekend, just the requirement to be the best for at least 90 minutes and with the pressure being placed firmly on the shoulders of Rangers, this could be the perfect time for Hearts to land a relative upset win.
But now it is time for the first of my two tips and with Rangers being in the state of flux they are in, I think Hearts will make life difficult for them. The double chance for Steven Naismith’s men is priced at 12/5 and that is more than enough to make this game interesting.
In addition to this, I am going to back Hearts’ hitman Lawrence Shankland to make things really interesting. The forward has already scored 21 league goals this season and therefore, I am backing him to open proceedings on Sunday at odds of 15/2.
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