STEVEN GERRARD insists Rangers still have a pressure to perform at Ibrox despite the absence of the demanding home crowd.
The Light Blues cruised to a 3-0 win over St Mirren in their first home outing of the campaign in the Premiership as Conor McCarthy's own goal and an Alfredo Morelos double clinched the victory.
It was the first time that Rangers have played a competitive game behind closed doors domestically as a result of the restrictions enforced due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
And Gerrard knows there is still a need for his side to hit the heights to satisfy an expectant support that tuned in from around the world to see the action.
He said: “Very pleased. I would have liked that second goal a bit earlier so we could relax a little bit more. But we were asking a lot of questions of St Mirren.
“We could have two or three in the first half but what pleased me most was that we stayed on the gas and never came off.
“We kept trying to find the answers and it came in the 70th minute. After that we finished the job off nice and strong.
“Two good wins, two clean sheets, so I'm reasonably happy.
“At the moment we don't have that situation (with the fans' frustrations) but there is still that pressure of being a Rangers player. Still that pressure that you need to go win the game.
“A lot of teams are going to sit here and set us the challenge to find the breakthrough.
“Jim has been going on all week about how well they've been defending and how solid and organised they look and he's come here and set us a challenge today.
“But I've got to give the players lots and lots of credit because we stayed on from the first whistle as we chased the breakthrough."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here