Rangers manager Dick Advocaat has told his players make or break time has already been reached this season.
The Ibrox club stands on the brink of two fixtures it cannot afford to lose. Tonight Rangers must see off Anzhi Makhachkala in the UEFA Cup and then return to take on Celtic in the first Old Firm derby of the season.
A Champions League exit at the qualifying stage plus a four-point domestic deficit has piled the pressure unusually early on Advocaat and his expensively-assembled squad.
The Anzhi tie was switched to neutral Warsaw as a one-off game after UEFA finally upheld Rangers' pleas that Makhachkala, the capital of the Russian state of Dagestan, was too near war-torn Chechnya for Westerners to travel in the wake of the attacks on America.
It is Anzhi's first foray into Europe and Advocaat has admitted he knows little about them. He expects a physical game however and has urged his technically-gifted but sometimes fragile players to be ready for a battle.
Rangers have taken a 19-man party to the Polish capital that includes Billy Dodds, Claudio Caniggia and Maurice Ross, three players who were not on duty at Tannadice last Saturday.
New signing Shota Arveladze was described by Advocaat as "quite close" to fitness and could feature at Ibrox on Sunday but Michael Ball remains doubtful to make his long-awaited debut.
