Last season, Steven Gerrard’s Rangers started the season with some great performances but as the campaign rolled along, they lost steam.
Eventually, Celtic picked up yet another domestic treble and Rangers finished second in the Premiership table – nine points behind their Old Firm rivals.
But this time around, Rangers have made a pretty solid start to the summer as they are yet to lose a game.
While they have managed to pick up wins in each of their Europa League qualifying games, Rangers have also remained unbeaten in their pre-season friendlies.
And speaking after the Teddy Bears’ 1-0 win over English side Derby County, Steven Gerrard explained to the media why his side looks more ready this time around.
The manager said: “Twelve months on, it’s only natural to have a better feel for the challenges that are going to come your way.
“I’m very much a person who tries to analyse and learn from my mistakes. I know my staff are doing everything they can to learn from where we went wrong last season, where we misjudged.
“So, of course, we are more prepared in terms of knowing what is coming. But the difficult thing is to go and prove we have improved, that we are a better team and have progressed.
“Everyone has pushed hard to get themselves in good condition. You saw from the performance today that we look as ready as we can be.
“Without being disrespectful, with some of the challenges we have had so far we should be keeping clean sheets.
“A lot of the games we put in place are to get the cobwebs off and get a feel for it again.
“But Derby were 90 minutes away from the Premier League. Yes, they’ve lost Mason Mount and Harry Wilson who are excellent players. But they have a £9 million centre-forward and I get if Tom Lawrence was to leave, he’d be worth £12-15 million.
“They have millions of pounds worth of players all over the pitch. They played their strongest team today and are a week away from their season starting, so no-one can say it’s because we are ahead of them from a fitness point of view.
“We’ve had really good, tough tests. Blackburn were fit and aggressive, we should have beat them. We were ahead of Marseille from a fitness point of view but their budget is bigger, their players earn hundreds of thousands more than my players do.
“So credit to the players, they’ve had a really strong pre-season. But you know what you get for that – absolutely nothing. So now it’s time to reset and go again next week.”
