Steven Hammell was yet to burst onto into the Motherwell first team the last time they tasted a league victory against Rangers at Ibrox, 25 years ago.
Owen Coyle scored twice as the Steelmen stunned Rangers on May 5, 1997.
However, Hammell is no stranger to a win over the Glasgow giants, having been part of a strong Motherwell side that beat a star-studded Rangers team 2-0 in his first game against them, back in 2000, and would love to make history tomorrow evening.
Goals from Kevin Twaddle and John Spencer saw a Motherwell side that included players like Andy Goram, Martyn Corrigan, Simo Valakari and Don Goodman, overcome the likes of Stefan Klos, Claudio Reyna, Arthur Numan, Jorg Albertz and Giovanni van Bronckhorst.
Hammell would like nothing better than to taste victory in Govan, but knows it’s going to be a difficult task.
He said: “That’s the goal. Regardless of who it is, we’ll put the team out to try and win the game.
“It’s very difficult. The stats and the history of that isn’t good – but I wasn’t in charge for a lot of those games!
“I remember we won a game here, one of my first games against Rangers, but that’s going away back to Andrei Kanchelskis, Rod Wallace and all these guys who were playing, so that’s how long ago that was.
“It would be great to get that again, to get that feeling, but any chance to win a game here in this league is difficult.
“Like every game we go into, we’ll try to give the best account of ourselves, we’ll go in to try and win the game – that will never change.
“We will put the best team out that we can, with what we’ve got at our disposal now, and put a game-plan together for us to hurt them as much as we can.
“It’s a team that’s got a new manager, new ideas, they’ve looked different.
“They’ve won the three games they’ve come in for, they’ve showed a side to them where even if it’s not perfect, they’re getting over the line.
“We’re looking at what we can bring to hurt them, while being fully aware of what they’ve got.
“It’s a very difficult one for us, we need to put the game at the weekend [2-2 draw against 10-man Kilmarnock] to bed now, and take as many positives as we can out of it, and be as prepared as we can be.”
Hammell says Motherwell undertook some good work during the five-week World Cup lay-off, but hoped to use home games against St Mirren and Kilmarnock as a springboard to successive away games at Ibrox and at Livingston.
That didn’t go to plan , with burst pipes forcing a postponement of the first game, while Killie fought back to take a point that had looked decidedly unlikely when their captain, Alan Power, was shown a straight red card 68 minutes in.
Hammell said: “We wanted to use the St Mirren and the Kilmarnock games to give us that platform to then go into these two away games with real confidence and purpose, and having more points.
“We have the St Mirren game still to play, but we wanted to go into those games in a really good position, on and off the pitch.
“It’s a very tight league, opposition is tough, everyone feels they can beat everyone else, and we’ve seen that for the most part of this season.
“That will be no different tomorrow.”
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