It’s safe to say a lot is riding on Sunday’s trip to Dens Park. It is critical that Rangers manager Philippe Clement backs up his comments on Friday by getting his men up and ready for the trip north, with his claim that the players won’t require to be lifted.

Clement says the right things in the press a lot of the time, not all, but a lot, and this was the right thing to say, even if we know it’s a bare-faced lie the likes of which good managers have to tell.

The players, down by around 10+ of injured number, will be pretty exhausted by this point. The Ibrox loss to Benfica wasn’t quite demoralising, but it’s easier to bounce back at the weekend from a midweek fixture when it was a good result, as opposed to losing, and it’s certainly much harder to bounce back when you outright went out of a big tournament with that loss.

So Rangers’ players, and the manager, really do have to lift themselves right back up and get themselves into the emotional and mental zone to take to the cold Dundee turf on Sunday and write midweek off.

With just that one win in the last four, it’s imperative the team gets back on the winning trail – Ibrox Noise suggested that a few days ago, that it was all about the league now and recent form hadn’t been the best.

We got to get back to winning ways, and Dundee is a tougher place to go than many in Scotland at the moment (not lost there since early February).

We can’t really see ‘them’ lot failing to get all three points today (although who knows), so for a brief spell Celtic will almost certainly be top of the table, and Rangers must travel to Dundee knowing a win will restore that lead.

Rangers absolutely used their get out of jail card last match day. Motherwell got the better of us at Ibrox only for Celtic to flub their lines and screw up the following day.

Some Rangers fans tried to spin it positively, by saying it was Celtic who used their get out of jail card because Rangers didn’t go 5 clear.

But you can’t use a get out of jail card in hindsight, can you? Or can you…

Either way, this weekend now is in the spotlight, and with 10+ players out, especially including some very important ones, Rangers will have overcome that to refocus and sort out the general form.

Expectations at Ibrox are high for a reason.