It will have gone largely unnoticed because of the events of the week – qualifying for the group stages of the Europa League for the fourth successive season and winning the first Old Firm derby of the season whilst being riddled with Covid-19 are acceptable distractions but, we go into the international break in good shape, in more ways than one.
As we saw during pre-season, we had players all over the place, coming back in different states of readiness and at different times playing a key role in our exit from the Champions League against a settled Malmo side half-way through their season – not an excuse, but certainly a factor.
Thankfully though, in this break, most of our squad will be staying at home either due to injury, form, or because of the government’s chaotic quarantine regulations.
Normally, Scott Arfield, Alfredo Morelos, Fashion Sakala, Joe Aribo and Leon Balogun would all have been off to different continents, but they are staying put, Borna Barisic and Filip Helander have both been called up by Croatia and Sweden respectively but are unlikely to start all – if any – of their country’s fixtures.
Nathan Patterson will join up with Scotland after his isolation period ends but it won’t do him any harm to get game time, if of course, Save Clarke does the right thing.
This should stand us in good stead when we next play a domestic fixture, St Johnstone on the 11th of September, seeing as the bulk of our squad will have had a short break before returning to training to prepare for a fixture that caused us a few problems last season, Sakala and Juninho Bacuna will also be able to get to know their team-mates better given the extra time on the training pitch.
After scraping through the first phase of the season, Steven Gerrard will be wanting to see the real Rangers over the next few months and a repeat of the form that saw us pull away from the pack on our way to 55.