Another Rangers variation? You can bet on it

We hadn’t planned to write articles in the wake of every European away game played by Rangers this season…

When we wrote those words in this article, we did mean them, honestly, but then the Gers went and provided yet more kit intrigue on Thursday evening.

To recap: their first four away games in this year’s Europa League campaign had seen four different kit permutations:

Kits against (l-r) Shkupi, Osijek, Maribor and Ufa

We wouldn’t have thought that an away game against the all-yellow Villarreal in the Europa League would be reason enough for a kit-change. If there was to be any deviation from Rangers’ first-choice kit combination, we’d have expected all-blue.

Instead, as planned they wore the change kit in its intended colourway of white shirts, blue shorts and white socks.

However, there was one key difference from the kit in the official Uefa graphic above:

The likelihood would have seemed to be that the shirts from the Ufa game, with the unbroken sash, had the Europa League and Respect patches applied to the sleeves and the 32Red logo put on the front.

However, the logo of back sponsors Utilita was present against Ufa but only one sponsor is allowed for the competition proper, while the shirts also had a different number font – the same as that used by Arsenal from 2009-12.

If they’re not the actual shirts from the Ufa game, they are obviously from the same batch and you’d feel that a white outline on the sponsor would work better.

And, just to add to it all, Ryan Kent (far right in front row) had the sash reversed on his shirt, but he changed at half-time.

An equaliser from Kyle Lafferty earned a 2-2 draw after they had fallen behind in the first minute. They don’t play away in the competition again until they go to face Spartak Moscow on November 8 – we’ll be waiting to see if a sixth different variation appears.