Walter Smith’s team gave a good account of themselves during the Champions League group stage, recording a goalless draw at Old Trafford and taking four points from Turkish champions Trabzonspor to ensure that they finished third and booked a last-32 place in the Europa League.

However, Kenny Miller has since left for the Turkish club and the draw hasn’t been particularly kind to the Scottish champions, who will face one of the best teams in Portugal at Ibrox in the hope of having an advantage to take to the capital in a fortnight’s time.

Smith has insisted that he will not be fielding a weakened team for the match, despite the impending Old Firm derby taking place this weekend which will go a long way to determining which Glasgow team wins the SPL title.

“It’s an important game on Sunday but this one is an important game too,” he said.

“We don’t enter tournaments to lose them. We want to do as well as we possibly can.

“We didn’t start out in the Europa League, we started out in the Champions League and were unable to stay in the Champions League. We are in the Europa League and we want to do as well as we can.”

Smith continued: “If we look at their circumstances at the moment, they have been a little bit similar to ourselves in the sense that, from the outside anyway, they look like they have financial problems within their club.”

Match odds:

Rangers, 6/4 with Boylesports

Draw, 23/10 with Coral

Sporting Lisbon, 9/4 with Victor Chandler