The next time this club wins a trophy will be a massive moment for us all

SLOWLY but surely, important signs of vitality are returning to Rangers. Players of a calibre rarely seen in the immediate post-liquidation days are illuminating the Ibrox dressing room again.

An ability to win significant one-off matches has at least given the top of the Premiership a competitive sheen.

Even the securing of a modest overdraft facility this week can only be seen as another step in the right direction.

Yet, for the rank and file, such positive indicators are only of so much interest.

After almost seven years without a major trophy, it’s no longer the journey which concerns them. Only the arrival at the destination.

‘We can sit here and say we’re moving closer and we’re getting better, but the fans only see us on a Saturday,’ said manager Graeme Murty.

‘They’re not seeing the stuff behind the scenes. They don’t see the ongoing work we are doing to improve on a daily basis.

‘They want to see it on a Saturday, so something tangible for them would be really special.

‘As much as we are more secure and improving as a squad, the fans want to see us get results. They want to see us perform. I said it to the players — the rules of this club are really simple. Just win.’

May 15, 2011, was the last time a top-flight Rangers squad managed that over the course of a competition.

A comprehensive victory over Kilmarnock that day secured the title for Walter Smith’s men, but it proved the point at which the nightmare began to unfold.

The notion of the Ibrox club being absent from the winners’ podium for a single season in those days seemed fanciful.

So emaciated and dysfunctional did it become after insolvency, though, that a lengthy period of separation from success became almost inevitable.

When the drought ends, as it surely must one day, the celebrations will match any that have gone before.

‘It would be a great reward to the fans for the years of dealing with what the club has been through and still turning out in massive numbers with incredible support,’ added Murty.

‘For the squad as well, to deliver something to the fans would be really special. Collectively, it would mean a great, great deal. I can’t actually quantify it.

‘This club has been built on winning things. When we do win something again, it will be a really important marker for us to say: “That’s where we need to be” and: “That’s where we’re going from”.

‘We can move forward from there. Rather than it be a highlight, it can be a starting point or a launchpad for us to move forward on to bigger and better things.

‘It’s about improving and evolving, getting back to where we need to be.’

If that place in the longer term is clearly back at the top of the Premiership table, no one realistically expects that to happen any time soon.

The Scottish Cup is a far more achievable goal, however. One which would represent a return to rude health in the way an advantageous financial arrangement never could. Joy among the light blue legions would be unconfined.

‘We understand it’s not going to happen overnight,’ said Murty (right). ‘But when we win our next trophy, there will be a massive outpouring — not just from the fans but from everyone associated with the club, everyone who has worked so hard to get us back.

‘It will be a massive moment for them. We have an opportunity to make a lot of people happy.

‘I walk down this corridor here (at the training ground) and I walk down the corridor at Ibrox to see trophy after trophy, manager after manager, great player after great player.

‘We have to be worthy of that legacy. We have to be worthy of standing alongside those guys. We haven’t managed to get back there but that’s what we are working towards.’

No one has to remind Murty of the danger Ayr United pose to Rangers’ ambitions of scratching their sevenyear itch. With 64 league goals to date, Ian McCall’s side are the highest scorers in Scotland’s top four divisions. They will certainly not be a pushover on their home patch tomorrow.

‘We’ve had Ayr watched a few times and we’ve seen a lot of footage,’ added Murty.

‘I know they are confident, so at home they’ll be relishing the opportunity to trip us up — just as Fraserburgh were.

‘We have to be on our mettle to ensure we don’t become the story of the round.

‘Just turning up and winning is a non-starter for us. We’ve already said that to the players at our first prep meeting. So they know what to expect.

‘They know Ayr have been flying and scoring goals this season. They have people in key positions who can cause problems. We need to make sure we deal with them at source.

‘If we do that, we will give ourselves a good opportunity. But we need to turn up with a fantastic attitude.

‘I keep coming back to it but attitude is at the root of a lot of stuff we do. That goes double for the weekend.’

It would be patently absurd to judge Murty’s tenure purely on the basis of how his side perform in this one competition.

Nonetheless, there is no question that losing to a side from two leagues below at this stage would wound him badly — perhaps even critically — as far as his hopes of remaining in the post next season are concerned.

On days such as these, with the chance of silverware in the

air, the stakes tend to be that little bit higher.

‘I view every game I go into as a good opportunity to do a good job,’ said Murty.

‘It’s for other people outside my control to decide my eventual fate. But how I prepare the team, set it up and influence the game through substitutions are all going to contribute towards what people think of me at the end of the season.

‘If we have a negative result at any time, that’s going to go against me and my future, if you will, at the club.

‘But I can’t consider myself. I think it would be incredibly selfish to go into a cup game as the manager of this club with a squad full of players and consider it to be about me.

‘I consider it as a game for us to move forward to what we’re trying to achieve this season.’