Having preached caution and talked down much of the hype surrounding Rangers this season, Walter Smith is finally allowing himself to dream of winning trophies, and certainly of reaching the last four of the Uefa Cup, which Scotland’s champions-elect will seek to do tonight in Lisbon.

Rangers face Sporting Lisbon in the Alvalade Stadium and, despite drawing 0-0 in the first leg at Ibrox last week, Smith’s men still have a decent chance of reaching the semi-finals. Plundering goals has not been Sporting’s forte this season, while Rangers have shown quite an aptitude for going on the road and finding the opposition net.

It would be quite a feat for this sometimes dour, dogged Rangers side to reach the last four – albeit in a tournament as strange as the Uefa Cup – and Smith was not in a mood to dismiss their chances as they arrived in Lisbon. The Ibrox manager senses a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity awaiting most of his players.

“The young players we have must realise that it’s not very often you get an opportunity to reach a semi-final of a major European competition,” Smith said yesterday. “For us, this is a big opportunity. It’s something that doesn’t come around very often and is a real chance for us, so we have to do all we can to seize it.”

Rangers are expected to have Carlos Cuellar available after the Spanish defender’s minor illness, and will also have Daniel Cousin, the striker, fit again after his month out with a broken jaw. Christian Dailly is expected to play alongside Cuellar in the centre of defence, given David Weir’s suspension.

Asked what reaching the semi-finals of the Uefa Cup would mean for him in his first season back at Rangers, Smith admitted that the feat would be a huge surprise for him. Back in 1992-93 he took the Ibrox club to the brink of a Champions League final, only to be pipped at the post by Marseilles, and this has been Smith’s best European run since then.

“It would be a surprise for me if we do it,” the Rangers manager said. “When we started out this season I didn’t think that we could get this far.

To be fair to the players, they have worked really hard and had a bit of luck along the way, but they have deserved it. In management, you make an assessment of your players, try to shape them into a team and see where you go. But I didn’t think that we would be able to reach where we have in my first season back here. To play 16 games in Europe is something I never imagined would be possible.”

The first leg at Ibrox last Thursday was nothing if not an eyesore. One British broadcaster who arrived in Glasgow to take in the game even condemned it as “the worst game of football I have seen in 20 years”.

Smith has been forced to admit that his team have a habit of lacking flair and imagination, an aspect that provoked booing from the Ibrox crowd against Sporting last week, which in turn angered the Rangers manager. Yet much of Rangers’ aesthetic shortcomings will be forgiven if they can reach the last four, where they would face either PSV Eindhoven or Fiorentina, both conquerors of English opposition – Tottenham Hotspur and Everton respectively – in the previous round.

“I don’t think the game will change much from the first leg at Ibrox,” Smith said. “But the away goal obviously has a huge influence on the way your team will play. I expect the match to start off in a similar fashion but, as the game goes on and as the circumstances change, it could affect the way the game is played.

“We had two difficult qualifying games in the Champions League but they got over that hurdle and acquitted themselves very well. Since we have dropped back into the Uefa Cup, we played reasonably well against Panathinaikos and had a wee bit of luck against Werder Bremen. Hopefully, we’ll continue to get that wee bit of luck, because you need it at this level.”

Lee McCulloch said yesterday that he did not care how Rangers did the deed, so long as they made the last four tonight. “Maybe we’re not the best to watch but we keep grinding out results,” he said. “It is all about winning for us and we’ve been doing that of late.

“We don’t really care what people think – in my eyes it doesn’t matter how you win, so long as you do it.

“It would be a great achievement getting to the semi-finals of the Uefa Cup – we’ve not been there for a long time. We know we can score away from home because we’ve done it before. Werder Bremen were one of the favourites for this tournament but we knocked them out, so that was a big confidence-booster for us.”