There’s a real level of satisfaction about today’s grimy, and yet professionally-won cup clash at Dumbarton for Rangers.

Make no mistake, this had the hallmarks of a horror banana skin for the Famous, with that diabolical performance at Ibrox v Morton still fresh in the memory under the old manager.

And of course, Dumbarton being officially the 7th-worst team in the entire 42-team Scottish Professional Football League pyramid, anything other than a convincing win was a fail.

We will admit 4 goals wasn’t quite the 10 we’d hoped for on Ibrox Noise, but in those conditions, a healthy number was still fairly admirable.

Let’s face it – the pitch was one of the worst Rangers have ever played on, the wind was rampant and it was monsoon-level pouring out there.

And for 30+ minutes wee Dumbarton actually did an energetic and admirable job of keeping Rangers at bay, with a bit of help from some dreadful finishing, particularly from Cyriel Dessers.

But once John Lundstram’s unmissable opener went in, it was a formality.

Yes, the goal conceded was miserable marking, but magnanimously, we’d say the hosts earned it for a plucky first half an hour.

After that, Rangers didn’t look back.

It wasn’t fluid, it wasn’t great football, but most of the players did actually look up for the match despite it being a horrific day, a parody of ‘can he do it on a wet Tuesday in Stoke’.

This really was a horrible evening, and yet the players professionally went out there, gave it a real bit of guts and came out with a good win.

Does this mean the winter blues are over?

We hope so. We’d like to think Philippe Clement has a way around that traditionally bad return from new year, and this did seem like evidence that things are better this year than usual.

We will truly properly know more on Wednesday, but this was a respectable performance on a day when it could have been a dire result.

Decent.