The Swansea City defender will be remembering his former team mate against Nottingham Forest tonight where a Liberty Stadium victory for the Swans will take them through to the most valuable game in football on May 30.<\/p>\n
The Swans go into the game nicely poised at 0-0 from the first leg last Thursday and Rangel says that any victory will be in the memory of Besian<\/p>\n
“We all know this weekend was the anniversary,” Rangel told the Western Mail. “We have spoken a lot about that as a squad and we know getting to Wembley and winning promotion is the best thing we can do for Besian.<\/p>\n
“He was very well liked here and if he was still here he would be part of this team and playing with the rest of us.<\/p>\n
“Everyone has been affected by it, but it is extra encouragement for us to go on and be successful.<\/p>\n
“It has been a difficult time, an emotional time, but this would be our own tribute to Besian.<\/p>\n
“You are always looking for an extra motivation in games, even in a play-off semi-final,” said Rangel.<\/p>\n
“And as a squad we have that. We have all had tough times. Andrea Orlandi lost his grandparents this season, Albert Serran too, so the whole group has had an emotional year.<\/p>\n
“But we want to do this for Besian.<\/p>\n
“We won’t get carried away with things, we put in a very good performance on Thursday, but there is a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n
“It’s make or break for both teams. It’s a semi-final and both teams want to get into the final. It’s a 50-50 game, but our confidence is high.<\/p>\n
“Our aim is to win the game, but we are aware that Forest are a big club, big spenders, have more experience than us in the play-offs and it won’t be an easy game.<\/p>\n
“They are strong. They were in the play-offs last year and they are in the mix again.<\/p>\n
“We are the underdogs and they have more pressure on them. I don’t think the pressure is always on the home team.<\/p>\n
“We went to Nottingham and I felt the pressure before the game; I was nervous.<\/p>\n
“But I settled quickly into the game and now we have the home fans behind us.<\/p>\n
“It will be a difficult game for both teams,” he said. “But psychologically we are very strong at home. We have scored so many goals here.<\/p>\n
“At home we have the crowd behind us, we love the open pitch and that allows us to play our game.<\/p>\n
“It is a fortress for us, and now it is getting a major test. But we have shown at home that we have beaten the big teams in this divisions – like Forest. Now we have to do the same.<\/p>\n
“We can’t be scared of what might happen, we have to go for it. So far it has gone well, but there is still a lot to play for before we are finished.”<\/p>\n
And with so much to play for, Rangel won’t get caught daydreaming just yet.<\/p>\n
Playing in a regional section of the Spanish third-tier just four years ago, the Premier League is just 180 minutes away for the Catalan who cost a meagre £15,000 in 2007. And he admitted: “I thought of the Premier League when I came over from Spain but it seemed a long way away.<\/p>\n
“So to get there and get there through the play-offs at Wembley would be amazing.<\/p>\n
“But we can’t be thinking of Wembley yet, it’s only half time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Swansea City defender will be remembering his former team mate against Nottingham Forest tonight where a Liberty Stadium victory for the Swans will take them through to the most valuable game in football on May 30. The Swans go into the game nicely poised at 0-0 from the first leg last Thursday and Rangel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}