With the World Cup in Qatar coming to its conclusion on Sunday evening, the focus will soon return in full to the regular domestic club season.
Of course, Rangers resumed competitive action on Thursday against Hibs and for many the next thing that matters will automatically have been the game to come at Pittodrie on Tuesday but there will still be a normality that follows in the coming days. The contest with Aberdeen is the first of three remaining games in 2022 by which time we will all be well and truly back into the groove.
The World Cup saw the club having only one representative in the Middle East with Borna Barisic on duty with the Croatia squad. Having fallen down the pecking order to Borna Sosa as first choice left back, an illness picked up by the Stuttgart player meant that the Gers man only saw action in one of their ties, the last 16 victory over Japan ahead of an eventual semi-final berth where their run would end against eventual winners, Argentina.
Barisic will soon be on his way back to Glasgow providing a welcome reinforcement to the first team with Rudvan Yilmaz currently unavailable due to injury. This will be another sign of normality resumed now that the World Cup has ended. We head directly into the busy period of fixtures over the Christmas and New Year holiday period and beyond with no Winter break this coming January.
An encouraging second half display against Hibs last Thursday must be followed up from the start against Jim Goodwin’s Dons who put up a very limited, ineffective performance against Celtic on Saturday. It will be far from a surprise if they suddenly find another gear on Tuesday evening.
See, back to reality it is!