Admittedly, Rangers are on a bit of a sticky patch at the moment. The struggled to see off Hamilton in the Scottish Cup, scraped past them in the league and needed a late goal to draw with Hearts on Saturday. However, they are top of the league, they are seven points clear of Celtic and they are favourites for tomorrow's game by a country mile.
Bizarrely, this may actually suit us. No one expects us to score, let alone win, and people certainly don't expect Rangers to lose. When we beat them last season they were on a good run and we'd slumped to the bottom, while the biggest defeat we suffered to them was when we were coming off the back of a decent result. Admittedly, this sort of omen isn't so much clutching at straws as hoping to grab hold of some saliva that's fallen off them.
Changes are needed after the last few games, but what more can be done? What line-ups haven't already been tried? Stephen O'Donnell and Garry Brady have all had more than enough chances to impress in midfield and failed to do so. That leaves Allan Johnston, who's done hardly anything when I've seen him, or Steven Robb, who doesn't seem to be allowed to play in midfield these days. Of course, changing to a 3-5-2 is also a possibility, but there's no chance of that happening any time soon. The best option is surely to put Robb on the left of the midfield so we have some much needed width.
To be honest, it wouldn't surprise me to see the return of 4-5-1 with Billy Mehmet as the lone striker, even though it's a home game. It can't produce a worse performance than we've seen recently as we've offered little up front due to a lack of chances, so we might as well bolster the midfield, sit in and hope Chris Innes can work his magic from a set piece. If we do go with two strikers it'll almost certainly be Mehmet and Craig Dargo. David Barron could return to the defence if he's fit (I can only assume injury was the reason for his omission from Saturday). Chris Smith and Tom Brighton are still out for the long term.
This is perhaps a good time to get Rangers as manager Walter Smith has hardly any fit strikers at his disposal. Kris Boyd is out, Kenny Miller and Nacho Novo will be missing and Kyle Lafferty and Steven Naismith are doubtful at best. That left them with Lee McCulloch and John Fleck on Saturday before sub Andrew Little got an SFA approved equaliser in injury time. However, you don't need strikers to beat us these days - just turning up and managing to attack should be enough. Naismith could be back, as could tricky American DaMarcus Beasley, while Steve Davis is a great midfielder when he's not commentating on snooker.
To rub things in, one of the Rangers defenders will probably look more attacking than our entire team tomorrow night. I am, of course, talking about former Saint Kirk Broadfoot. While the steppvers and dragbacks seem to have disappeared, he still seems to like to get forward quite a lot - although as he plays at rightback most of the time this is probably not a bad thing. He hasn't got many goals for Rangers but he'd love nothing more than to get one against us tomorrow.