By Barry Ferguson

Copyright dailyrecord

There’s no point sugar-coating it and nothing to be gained by pretending Rangers and Russell Martin have got the season off to a positive start. And I’m perfectly sure no-one inside Ibrox would even attempt to suggest they’ve been happy with the first few weeks of the campaign. It’s been difficult for the new manager and, at times, it’s looked a bit frenzied. But it’s also worth remembering it was always likely to be a turbulent, transitional period. Not only has Russell been attempting to get his team to play a completely different style of football and lay down a new structure on the field but, in the background, he’s also been trying to overhaul an entire squad in one transfer window with a revolving door at Auchenhowie. When you think about it, with all that’s been going on, it was never likely to be as smooth as the club’s supporters were hoping for. There were always going to be bumps along the way. That all said, when the season restarts on Saturday at three o’clock, there can be no more distractions. And no more excuses. The hard yards have been done over the course of the summer. Russell said himself he was desperate for the summer market to shut down because of all the noise it had been creating Who’s staying? Who’s going? What’s this team going to look like if they allow Cyriel Dessers and Hamza Igamane to move on? How do they cope with losing two strikers in one go? Well, now we have answers to those questions. The dust has settled and Russell will have been able to take some time during the international break to get his head clear. I know from personal experience that this job dominates your every waking moment. It’s 100 miles an hour, all day every day. So Scotland’s World Cup openers will have given everyone a bit of a pause and a chance to assess the situation. Most important of all, it’s also provided everyone with clarity for what’s required going forward. So when Hearts come to Ibrox on Saturday, Rangers will get the opportunity to relaunch their whole season. And it’s one they simply cannot afford to miss. Maybe Russell will have time to reflect on the whirlwind of his first few months in the job. Maybe he’ll come round to the realisation all the style and pretty patterns in the world won’t matter a damn in this city unless Rangers are winning games of football. I certainly hope so. Because I don’t know a Rangers fan out there who takes any comfort from watching their team drop points just because they might have played some attractive stuff in the process. They are not built that way. Rangers are not built that way. The bottom line is, four games into the new season, they are still waiting for a first league win and that’s something this team must address immediately if they want to get supporters back on their side. The window has slammed shut. The focus is now entirely on who is left inside the building. A line can now be drawn under all that early chaos. But in order to do that, they have to start winning games of football because anything less at the weekend is simply going to pile even more pressure on top of them. I don’t care what the performance looks like on Saturday. I just want three points on the board and the gap between Rangers and Celtic cut to three. Let’s not forget Hearts are also sitting six points clear of Rangers after a solid start under Derek McInnes and he’ll be rubbing his hands at the thought of extending that gap at Ibrox. Everyone knows how much I admire him as a manager. He did a brilliant job at Aberdeen and they made a huge mistake when they let him go. I didn’t expect Del to drop down into the Championship at Kilmarnock because I didn’t think he’d be prepared to go down the levels. But he took them from the second tier all the way into European football in the blink of an eye. That’s the quality he has as a manager. And despite all the algorithms and Tony Bloom’s data, Derek has been the best signing of the summer at Tynecastle. Rangers will have their work cut out against his team but they should also know what’s coming. They have to be up for it from the first minute and prepared to fight even harder than the Hearts players on the other side of that white line. Because Del will have them right up for it, you can be absolutely sure of that. These Rangers players should be itching to get back out there. It’s been a couple of weeks since the Old Firm game and that final whistle couldn’t have come quickly enough. To say it was a tough watch is an understatement. But even so, Rangers made sure the gap didn’t become nine points on that Sunday. And even though I hate to admit it, I probably would’ve taken that before kick-off. Two weeks on, the picture feels different. The business has been done and Russell has the chance to hit the reset button. What Rangers can’t afford to do is take their eye off the ball because of what’s been going on the last couple of weeks on the other side of the street. Yes, there’s clearly something going on at Celtic. I don’t know why that is or who is to blame but I do know it doesn’t feel like a happy place right now. And there’s probably more unrest to come. But so what? I’m not even lapping up any of it as a Rangers fan because it’s none of my business. And it’s certainly nothing to do with the players inside Russell’s dressing room. Rangers have plenty of their own problems to sort out and that’s the way I would be thinking if I was one of those players. You can’t afford to be pointing a finger at your rivals when there’s so much hard work to be done to get your own house in order. If they’re distracted by Celtic’s issues they’re not going to be focused on the job in hand. Dangerous at the best of times, never mind when you’re six points off the pace. The only thing you can do is to try to apply some pressure on them from the outside and see how they cope with it. Win on Saturday and the gap is three points, with Celtic facing a tricky trip to Kilmarnock’s difficult playing surface on Sunday. They may have been creating their problems over the last fortnight. But now it’s up to Rangers to step up and give them even more to worry about on the other side of town.