There’s no denying that while Rangers’ performance v Stirling Albion was below the team’s best by some margin, there were considerably significant positives to take from Govan as well.

Ibrox Noise takes you through 8 things we learned from Rangers hosting of the League Two strugglers.

1: Gio is good to his word about playing youth. When Ianis Hagi picked up a knock, rather than being replaced by Scott Wright, it was young Alex Lowry who got the nod. And boy did he take his chance, with a superb goal and composed performance. Rangers may finally have a boss willing to mean it when he says if they’re good enough they’re old enough. Leon King’s cameo further emphasised this.

2: On the Lowry topic, we’re not going to get ahead of ourselves by saying a star is born. It was, after all, Albion, but the 18-year old could not have delivered more than he did, and gave a wonderful glimpse into his potential. With the right coaching, the right blooding, and the right pace, Lowry has a good chance of breaking into the first team in the future. There’s a lot of ifs though, so let’s so how he develops over the next two years.

3: Jack Simpson is an embarrassment – beaten all ends up by Nathan Flanagan, Rangers’ defender made a League Two winger look like Messi. Don’t give us the nonsense about him playing out of position at LB, or even the fact he went forward with gusto, being beaten that easily by a part timer is a failure to cope with the basics of football. He had a chance to impress, and was abysmal.

4: Rangers made a lot of hard work of this one – that it took sub Lowry with a moment of quality above what his team mates were producing to open the scoring showed how laboured the squad are looking at the moment. The post new-year blues seem to be back. Every January we urge the players to focus and look energised, but instead they always return slowly, if at all.

5: Cedric Itten may have bagged himself a goal, but otherwise didn’t do much to show he’s a real option. His flaffed attempt practically on the goal-line with some part of his anatomy which STILL got a save from the stopper showed where he’s probably at right now. Sure, he does need goals and a run of games – it’s up to Gio if he has confidence in the Swiss forward.

6: A number of players quite simply didn’t impress. Simpson, Itten, Bacuna (was he even playing) and Barker, and it shows that Rangers’ strength in depth might be enough to overcome Albion, but it won’t beat Aberdeen.

7: What was critical was passage to the next round. A clean sheet was a nice bonus, but end of the day we need to end this cup hoodoo. And that was the primary goal, even if we didn’t advance with an awful lot of style.

8: Robby McCrorie will feel hard done by that he didn’t get an outing last night. McLaughlin is able enough but he’s not the future, while the younger model sat on the bench. Bit of a missed opportunity that one.

That will do for now. An interesting night.