Rangers return to Ibrox tomorrow for the visit of Ross County with Michael Beale looking to extend his impressive start to life as manager.
The Gers gaffer has managed to find a level of consistency of selection that hasn’t really been seen since winning the league a couple of seasons ago but will want to give both his new signings and players returning from injury minutes to get them up to speed.
As we have seen in recent seasons, the Staggies won’t be set up purely to defend and, as Beale said as part of the pre-match press conference, it will be a tough test despite being at home:
“They have always given us a difficult game at Ibrox – I remember some difficult moments against them and what I would say about Malky is he always sets his team up to try to win the game.
“They have got a different type of battle from now to the end of the season than we’ve got but it is important we put on a strong home performance.”
The difference with Ross County is that they don’t try harder against us than they do other teams, it’s just the way that Malky Mackay sets them up, they certainly don’t play like a team sitting just a point above the bottom of the table and their performances deserve better.
Beale has spoken about freshening the team up but where he does this is anyone’s guess. I’d expect the defence to be the same but it’s a difficult task deciding who should miss out from the front six because of how well they played against Hearts. Personally, I’d rather go with the same team again and then make earlier changes.
Todd Cantwell, Ianis Hagi and Antonio Colak bring a much needed quality to the squad and we could well see two of them come in from the start, the Romanian will be given time but he isn’t ready to start just yet, then there is Nicolas Raskin who, if his clearance comes through in time, will be dying to make his debut.
What makes a refreshing change is the manager actually having options rather than picking players purely because they are fit and available – this might take some getting used to.