Sparta Prague vs Rangers prediction: EUROPE: Europa League – Group Stage betting tips on match 2023-10-25 16:45.
The two Group C sides that lost in the second round of the 2023/24 UEFA Europa League (UEL) group stage, Sparta Prague and Rangers, meet at a crucial stage where all four clubs in the group have three points each. Sparta’s 2-1 defeat to Real Betis remains their only competitive loss since late August (W9, D1), so they’ll be hoping they can quickly get back to winning ways as they target springtime European football for the first time since 2021/22.
Iron Sparta, who top the Czech First League by two points ahead of great rivals Slavia Prague, should fancy their chances of doing that after they hammered SK Dynamo České Budějovice 4-0 by winning both halves at the weekend, in addition to emerging victorious their last three UEL home fixtures. They’ve also never lost against Scottish opponents at home in UEFA competitions (W4, D1), a run that includes a pair of 1-0 H2H victories in 1991 and 2021.
That should give new Rangers manager Philippe Clement plenty to think about after he made a strong first impression with a 4-0 league win over Hibernian on Saturday. Clement made his intentions in this competition clear by declaring he “wants to win everything”, but quickly tempered expectations by adding he’s “not a magician”. The former Belgian international returns to work in Europe with more than 50 UEFA games under his belt as a manager, and inherits a side that has alternated between victory and defeat across their last seven UEL fixtures (W3, L4).
Their shock 2-1 matchday two defeat to Aris Limassol was the Scottish side’s fifth consecutive UEL loss on foreign soil, which hardly sets them up well for a visit to modern-day Czech Republic, where they’ve never won a European away game (D1, L4). They scored just once across those five fixtures against four different Prague-based clubs: Sparta, Slavia, Dukla Prague and Viktoria Žižkov!
Players to watch: Jan Kuchta completed the scoring in two of Sparta’s last four fixtures, while former Slavia player Abdallah Sima netted both of Rangers’ UEL goals this term, each of them arriving between the 65th and 70th minute.
Hot streak: Sparta scored at least twice before half-time in each of their last six home games (HT: W6).