Gio van Bronckhorst can be seeking to keep away from a recurrence of the ignominy he suffered at Anfield in his solely look there when Rangers take to Merseyside on Tuesday night.
The Gers are within the Champions League group levels for the primary time in 12 years, and the primary time since they suffered liquidation again in 2012 after slowly climbing their means again up the footballing pyramid; though their group on the continental stage couldn't have been tougher after being pitted towards the likes of Ajax, Napoli and Liverpool on this season's group A.
Presently sitting on zero factors from their opening two video games, the Gentle Blues face their hardest check on paper as they journey to Anfield in quest of a scalp having by no means performed the Reds in a aggressive fixture. However while that may ring true for nearly all of their squad, there may be one Rangers member of workers who has a poor historical past on Merseyside - van Bronckhorst himself.
The Dutchman's solely ever look at Anfield got here again in December 2001 while he was a left-back on the books at Arsenal, with the Gunners firmly within the title race alongside Newcastle, Manchester United and Phil Thompson's males. Having gone into the sport in third place, it was a troublesome ask for Arsene Wenger's males to stroll away with all three factors.
Van Bronckhorst set the tone for the fiesty event with a yellow card on 19 minutes after committing a late foul on Sami Hyypia, which was justified. Nonetheless, that turned to a nightmare simply 17 minutes later after a controversial resolution by referee Paul Durkin.
After going right into a problem with the Finnish star as soon as once more, Van Bronckhorst went to floor and received straight again up, inferring that there was no motive for anyone within the floor to imagine he had dived. Nonetheless, Durkin disagreed and gave the left-back his marching orders, a lot to absolutely the horror of the Arsenal bench.
His 36-minute cameo was quick and positively not candy; though it didn't matter for a lot in the long term because the Gunners left the north-west with all three factors after Thierry Henry and former Celtic star Freddie Ljungberg secured victory.
Van Bronckhorst will probably be pleased for one among his Rangers place to repeat the identical feat if the tip end result works out to be the identical; though having acquired a pink card towards Napoli and ultimately shedding 3-0, that will undoubtedly be one thing of a pipe dream.