[cloudy3139]

Hey Werder fans, hope i made this thread properly I have no idea why you might put a [R] like this.

I'm a Rangers fan living in Scotland and wanted to learn more about your team.

I have checked them out on Wiki, and the first thing i've noticed about Werder are they fact that your players are very tall. Infact it seems rare that any of your players are below 6 ft.

This is something which could cause Rangers some problems, as we are used to bullying other teams because of our physical style of play. We normally like to physically dominate teams with our strength and by sometimes knocking the ball long to a target man striker, but this might be difficult against such a formidable side.

I already know about many of your players such as; Wiese, Naldo, Frings, Klasnic, Diego and many others, but i was hoping you could fill me in with any other information. Especially on their form and injuries.

Rangers play using a very typical British style of play, mostly long balls and heavy pressing of players with the ball. Our greatest strength is our defence, in particular Carlos Cuellar our central defender. He's great in the air and on the ground.

You will probably have heard of our captain more often though Barry Ferguson. He's also the Scotland captain and an excellent midfielder.

Other players to watch out for are; Nacho Novo who has a habit of scoring important goals, Brahim Hemdani who is a very defensive midfielder, but also a good passer, Kevin Thomson who is a very high energy midfielder, and Chris Burke who is the most creative player of ours going forward, he is a winger.

Werder have a good chance of getting through to the next round, as our attention is very much on the league and domestic trophies, as we havn't won any thing for 2 seasons. This was mostly due to incompetent managers and a lack of money, but now Walter Smith, our manager has returned we have returned to winning ways albeit playing less attractive football. Smith led us to 9 league titles in a row during the 1990's.

I'm aware though that Werder are also looking to win the Bundesliga.

["Eisenfuß" Eilts]

Originally Posted by cloudy3139

Hey Werder fans, hope i made this thread properly I have no idea why you might put a [R] like this.

Hi, the [R] significates, that results are posted.
So people, who don´t want to know how a match ended
can avoid these threads.

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I would describe my team as a possesion- and pass-orientated offensive team.
That means, that the team tries to get much ball-possesion and
then tries to use the possesion to get chances.
In Europe we have been very strong at home. The only teams, that could
beat us there we Barca and this CL campaign sadly Olympiakos.
In away matches we are sadly not as strong as at home.
That´s also a reason why we didn´t make it out of the CL group stage.

In goal there Tim Wiese is our unquestioned no.1.
His greatest strength are his very good reflexes.
His substitute is Christian Vander.

In defense there we play as most teams with 4 defenders.
In the central defense there we have our "skyscraper" (both 1.98 m):
Per Mertesacker, a strong tackler, but very fair player, and Naldo,
also a solid defender with good tackling skills. Both also good in the air.
The right and left defenders are very offensive orientated.
There are no real first players at these positions,
because all of them were already injured this season
(we had great injury problems with up to 15 players injured).
Candidates are:
Clemens Fritz, Petri Pasanen (who can also play central defender)
for the right defender position,
Sebastian Boenisch, Dusko Tosic for the left defense
and Patrick Owomoyela, who can play both.
Pierre Womé is sadly injured since the beginning of the
season and also won´t participate in the matches.

The midfield players play a very important role in our system.
There we play with a diamond formation: a DM, two CMs and one COM.
At the defense midfield position there normally Torsten Frings plays,
a complete midfielder with good tackling, vision and passing skills.
Sadly he suffers this season under many injuries and could only do
6 matches so far. Behind him is a question mark.
Frank Baumann (captain of the team) and Jurica Vranjes
are defensive orientated midfielders,
Tim Borowski and Daniel Jensen (who is in good form)
are complete midfielders, that can play on every midfield position.
In the offensive midfielder there plays Diego,
our playmaker with great passing and dribbling skills.
Mesut Özil, who joined us in the winter break,
can also play this position. He is a young talent with good technical skills.

In the attack we play with 2 strikers.
Ivan Klasnic (joined the team in November after a kidney operation,
he is the first professional football player, that plays with not his own kidney)
is an experienced striker with good technic and goal instinct.
The last weeks he was in great form. Markus Rosenberg is also a player
with good technic while Hugo Almeida and Boubacar Sanogo are physical player.
Aaron Hunt and Martin Harnik are two young players,
that can play both attack and midfield.
Most likely two of the 4 first mentioned strikers play,
but coach Schaaf will as always judge it by day-form, so be surprised.

I watched Rangers this year in tv against Stuttgart.
It looked like you described, not very attrictive, but dangerous,
because you are an effective team.

I hope for 2 interesting matches.
Who ´ll advance depends on day-form IMO.

[saelevena]

Werder are a very offensive minded team and are all about scoring goals, which does cause problems though, because we then tend to concede a lot too (see goal difference in the Bundesliga).

Our midfield is very important to the link up with strikers.
Diego is our leading man for that, but if Rangers are able to shut him down, then he is going to have trouble playing his own game. Therefore, it will be harder for the strikers to receive the ball. But we do have other players who link up well, Jensen who plays a similar role to Diego has been on form and playing amazing for us lately. He is quite dangerous. The attacking minded left and right backs eg Fritz, Tosic also tend to run down the wing a lot in order to maintain support for the strikers. Ozil, the new kid is very speedy but has not yet adjusted to the team yet. He’s a bit selfish, but should mature in time.
Our strikers are scoring machines when on form. We’ve got a handful of quality strikers so it’s hard to choose which two would partner each other on a regular basis because they’re chosen based on current form, obviously. Lately Rosenberg has been main starter with Almeida and Klasnic being his occasional partners. Sanogo though, has been left out since his absence (African cup) but he was very important for us in the first half of the season. So yeah… who knows which two will start against Rangers.
Our central defenders Mertesacker and Naldo can also be very dangerous in set pieces; with their great height they are able to position themselves well in corners to head the ball home. Naldo is also known to have a very strong and precise free kick.

Also, the team is a bit inconsistent. They can play exceptionally well one day and the next they’re shite. Our poor consistency pretty much cost us the Bundesliga last season. But this season it is injuries that have plagued the team, but it has also helped to discover the talents on the bench. So we can’t keep using injuries as an excuse.

I’ve also been able to watch Rangers play in the Champions League, both at home against Barcelona and Lyon. They were solid against Barca but Lyon really tore them apart. But it is also true and quite unfortunate that Werder have a poor away record in Europe so they will have to make the best of it at home.

Anyway, may the best team win.

[cloudy3139]

Yes, Diego has played at Ibrox before, when he was a little younger at Porto. He didn't impress too much in that game, i think we were too physical for him. The game did end 3-2 to Rangers, but those goals Porto scored came from identical corners, not taken by Diego.

I think Diego will find it difficult at Ibrox if he plays, as we normally use a 4-5-1 at home in Europe, and we are very aggressive in the centre of midfield.

If Kevin Thomson returns to injury it will be extremely difficult for Diego to find any time on the ball.

Our best line-up for the game will probably be; McGregor,

Whittaker, Cuellar, Weir, Papac,

Burke, Ferguson, Hemdani, Thomson, McCulloch,

Darcheville (If he returns from suspension, otherwise it could be Kris Boyd, or Daniel Cousin if he is still a Rangers player).

However, because we are prioritizing other competitions, Nacho Novo may play on the right, and Charlie Adam on the left of midfield.

We play Gretna the team who are last in the SPL tomorrow.

I heard Werder lost 1-0 today, was that against Frankfurt? One of their players, Sotirios Kyrgiakos used to play for us, and played against Diego for Rangers against Porto. Infact Kyrgiakos scored the winning goal to make it 3-2. Just some useless information for you there

Rangers will try to squeeze the game against Werder, we tend to play our best football against very attacking teams. We will try to defend for most of the game, making a team take risks or a gamble against us and then steal a goal. For instance our away match in the Champions League against Lyon, when we won 3-0 in France.

Our loss at home to Lyon looks worse than it was, Rangers only needed a point in the game whereas Lyon needed a win. When Lyon scored it meant we needed to go forward and take risks, which is not our usual game as i said above, and so we lost 2 more goals from the fantastic Benzema. He was brilliant against us, but that was by far our poorest performance in the CL this season.

The best thing Bremen can do is score an early goal at Ibrox, our stadium, as this will force us to abandon our defensive tactics and will make it easy for Werder.

Walter Smith, our manager, is known for not taking risks and playing it safe, hence our tight matches against Red Star and Panathinaikos this season.

In fact Rangers have only lost 2 goals in the last 10/11 matches in all competitions.

[Moonsault]

The game won't be shown on german TV. What a shame... Rangers wanted to have too much money and the game will have to compete against RSC Anderlecht - FC Bayern München and Bayer Leverkusen - Hamburger SV. So the bigger TV channels don't want to take the risk and the smaller channels don't have the money. Nice...

[LebenslangGruenWeiss]

Originally Posted by Moonsault

The game won't be shown on german TV. What a shame... Rangers wanted to have too much money and the game will have to compete against RSC Anderlecht - FC Bayern München and Bayer Leverkusen - Hamburger SV. So the bigger TV channels don't want to take the risk and the smaller channels don't have the money. Nice...

which is slightly funny because this season Werder has had more viewers than Bayern. Werder.tv offers the match via Internet as pay-per-view.

[cloudy3139]

No Rangers weren't concerned about the money, they were concerned about actually getting a full house at Ibrox.

If the game was any earlier than 7:45 (i know its actually at 8), then people would have to rush from work, perhaps without their dinner. Rangers purposively rejected various tv companies offers actually so we could actually allow our fans to watch the game.

So

Anyway, back to the football and Rangers defensive record has been blown apart in recent game with one 1 clean sheet in 3, but thats about 6 goals conceeded in 13/14 games or something. So its not too bad.

It's hard to predict a team for Rangers at the moment as our squad rotation policy is crazy because of the amount of games we are playing. (Rangers are competing in 2 domestice cup competitions and the league championship, as well as the Uefa cup).

So i don't know how much focus we will give this game, our manager says he will ask our players to give it their all, but we will see.

I'll give the team selection a bash again: McGregor

Broadfoot Cuellar Weir Whittaker

Novo/Burke Davis Dailly Ferguson Adam/McCulloch

Cousin/Darcheville

It's very hard to predict the line-up we have a few players coming back from injury as well, so they may end up back in the team eventhough it will be their first game for a while.

We don't have a lot of stand out players, so the injuries dont really affect us, our squad are all quite similar in quality. McGregor, Ferguson and Novo probably being the best players, and most in form, as well as Davis.

I'll post some pics of inside Ibrox at the game on Friday, for you guys to enjoy as well.

[cloudy3139]

Forgot Darcheville is suspended for the first game, so it will be Cousin up front on Thursday.

["Eisenfuß" Eilts]

Originally Posted by cloudy3139

No Rangers weren't concerned about the money, they were concerned about actually getting a full house at Ibrox.

Yes, it´s not like Celta Vigo last year.
The German tv stations don´t want to broadcast it,
because there is another match with German teams
at the same time (Leverkusen - Hamburg) and the German tv stations
think a BL derby, that is shown two times every season is more interesting than Rangers- Werder,
that takes place the first time in history. Ok, ...
It makes it a bit more complicated for us,
but it´s no real deal. As LGW already said, Werder and maxdome
bought the online tv-rights from Rangers and offer the match
for 5.99 €. Furthermore there will be some streams.*

*: any news on streams broadcasting the match?

[krelmatrix]

Originally Posted by LebenslangGruenWeiss

which is slightly funny because this season Werder has had more viewers than Bayern. Werder.tv offers the match via Internet as pay-per-view.

It also says on the werder.tv site, in regards to the Ranger-Werder match:
"Kostenlos für alle WERDER.TV-Abonnenten"
I assume they are referring to the €3.99/month packet? I can't find any other Werder-specific subscriptions on the site. Not that I'm complaining, but it would seem kinda funny that the one-time price for the single match (€5.99) would be considerably more than a monthly fee which would get you that match for free anyways.