If one thing stood out about Saturday night’s Scotland match, it was the notably Rangers-increased contribution.

Finally, manager Steve Clarke gave Patterson a start, put Gilmour in midfield and had Lyndon Dykes up top, a player who wanted to join Rangers and is said to be a Rangers man too.

Not only that, but Chris Woods as part of the backroom staff as well as boyhood fan Kenny McLean coming on later on meant there was probably the strongest Rangers ‘feel’ to this Scotland side we can remember pretty much since before the Loch Lomond incident.

And while we’re not pretending the result was the sparkling 5-0 drubbing a side as poor as Moldovia should have suffered, the tempo, play, and attacking guile in this one was far far better than what we’ve seen under this coach before.

To be clear, here’s the main stat:

16 shots, 7 on target. As the old saying goes, it’s more worrying not to make chances, than to miss tonnes.

This team was at least putting something together which resembled an attempt at attacking football, and we can’t help wondering just how much of that was inspired by the Rangers two of Gilmour and Patterson, with Rangers-linked Dykes being in there.

We always said a decent Scotland side had to have a strong Rangers representation, whether present, past or Rangers-minded players, as well as the Celtic and otherwise contingent.

And of course this wasn’t a vintage performance but it was certainly better than the negative tripe we’ve seen under this coach for too long.

Has O’Donnell finally lost his place to the better model?

We hope so – Patterson is far superior in every department and in fact outperformed the supposedly world class Andrew Robertson on the other side by quite some distance.

If Clarke doesn’t stick with the young pup now, he’s evidently as stupid as he looks.