Gio van Bronckhorst will be looking to avoid a recurrence of the ignominy he suffered at Anfield in his only appearance there when Rangers take to Merseyside on Tuesday evening.
The Gers are in the Champions League group stages for the first time in 12 years, and the first time since they suffered liquidation back in 2012 after slowly climbing their way back up the footballing pyramid; although their group on the continental stage could not have been harder after being pitted against the likes of Ajax, Napoli and Liverpool in this season's group A.
Currently sitting on zero points from their opening two games, the Light Blues face their hardest test on paper as they travel to Anfield in search of a scalp having never played the Reds in a competitive fixture. But whilst that will ring true for almost all of their squad, there is one Rangers member of staff who has a poor history on Merseyside - van Bronckhorst himself.
The Dutchman's only ever appearance at Anfield came back in December 2001 whilst he was a left-back on the books at Arsenal, with the Gunners firmly in the title race alongside Newcastle, Manchester United and Phil Thompson's men. Having gone into the game in third place, it was a tough ask for Arsene Wenger's men to walk away with all three points.
Van Bronckhorst set the tone for the fiesty occasion with a yellow card on 19 minutes after committing a late foul on Sami Hyypia, which was justified. However, that turned to a nightmare just 17 minutes later after a controversial decision by referee Paul Durkin.
After going into a challenge with the Finnish star once again, Van Bronckhorst went to ground and got straight back up, inferring that there was no reason for anybody in the ground to believe he had dived. However, Durkin disagreed and gave the left-back his marching orders, much to the absolute horror of the Arsenal bench.
His 36-minute cameo was short and definitely not sweet; although it did not matter for much in the long run as the Gunners left the north-west with all three points after Thierry Henry and former Celtic star Freddie Ljungberg secured victory.
Van Bronckhorst will most likely be happy for one of his Rangers place to repeat the same feat if the end result works out to be the same; although having received a red card against Napoli and eventually losing 3-0, that would undoubtedly be something of a pipe dream.
