Rangers on verge of matching famous unbeaten league run set by Walter Smith's Champions League pioneers

Rangers will equal the club’s longest unbeaten top flight league run in a single season for 28 years if they avoid defeat against Kilmarnock at Ibrox on Saturday.

Rangers players celebrate with the Premier Division trophy at Ibrox in May 1993 after a campaign which included the 29-game unbeaten league run which Steven Gerrard's team are close to matching. (Photo by SNS Group).

Steven Gerrard’s squad are currently undefeated in 28 Premiership matches since the start of the current campaign.

It leaves them just one short of the 29-game sequence achieved by Walter Smith’s treble-winning Champions League pioneers in 1992-93, one of the most momentous seasons in Rangers’ history.

Smith’s team compiled a remarkable run of 44 fixtures without defeat in all competitions in a campaign which saw Rangers become the first British club to play in the Champions League group stage. They were unbeaten in the inaugural edition of UEFA’s revamped European Cup, narrowly missing out on a place in the final.

Their undefeated 29-game run in the Scottish Premier League began with a 1-1 draw against Celtic at Ibrox on August 22, 1992 and ended with a 2-1 defeat at Celtic Park on March 20, 1993.

Rangers lost just four times in the then 44-game top flight, their only defeats in a mammoth 64-game season which saw them win the club’s first domestic treble since 1978.

Gerrard’s runaway Premiership leaders are also just five games short of equalling the club record of 33 unbeaten top flight league games from the start of a season.

That was set in the 1967-68 campaign when Rangers remained undefeated until the 34th and final fixture of the old First Division, losing 3-2 at home to Aberdeen as they finished two points behind champions Celtic.

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