PIETER Huistra, the former Rangers and Netherlands winger, last night warned Barrie McKay that he must improve his decision making in order to realise his full potential.

Huistra, who won five league titles with the Ibrox club between 1990 and 1995, was back in Glasgow last week to watch his former club in action against St. Johnstone.

The eight-times capped midfielder still follows the fortunes of his former club closely online and has been impressed by McKay since he established himself in the Rangers first team last season.

Many managers and pundits in the game have tipped the player, who won his first cap for Scotland in a friendly international against France in Metz last summer, to go to the very top.

However, Huistra, who has worked extensively as a coach, manager and technical director in Europe and Asia since retiring from playing, felt the 22-year-old made some bad choices in the 3-2 win over the Saints.

The 50-year-old has urged the wide man, who will be one of the key players for caretaker manager Graeme Murty in the Ladbrokes Premiership match against Celtic at Parkhead on Sunday, to work harder on that aspect of his game.

“I have only seen Barrie in person in one game, but I follow Rangers on the internet and have seen him many times online,” he said. “Barrie has good things, but I think he can improve in some areas.

“As I say, he has very good qualities and is a very exciting player, but he also has areas where he can get better. Sometimes you watch him and say: ‘Woah! What’s he doing now? Why did he do that?’

“He needs somebody who can constantly speak to him and tell him where he must improve. But I am sure somebody at the club is doing that. He is an exciting prospect, but he can improve.

“I look at the decisions that he makes sometimes and wonder why he made them. He has to focus on his ball handling speed and making the right decisions.

“He has to be able to execute the decision he makes. If you make a good decision, but don’t execute the right pass it won’t work.

"If you make the right decision you also have to make the right pass with a good ball speed. You have to understand your team mates.”

Rangers have been beaten in their three previous meetings with Celtic this season - and were thrashed 5-1 on their last visit to Parkhead back in September.

But the Championship holders will go into this weekend’s meeting with their city rivals with confidence high thanks to their emphatic 6-0 win over top flight rivals Hamilton in the William Hill Scottish Cup quarter-final at Ibrox on Saturday.

Huistra was on the winning side in the Old Firm game on more occasions than he was in the losing team when he was on the books at Rangers during the Nine-In-A-Row era in the 1990s.

He believes that Murty’s men must believe they can overcome Brendan Rodgers’s charges – who are undefeated in their 34 domestic outings in the 2016/17 campaign – to stand any chance of prevailing at the fourth time of asking.

“The Old Firm games were always the highlight of the season when I was at Rangers,” he said. “We were lucky at that time that we won most of them. It was always good.

"It was a special game which was played at a high pace with a lot of emotions. It wasn’t always easy to play in them. But it was always very exciting.

“This Rangers team have to believe that they can win. That was the strong point of the team I played in. We always went into the game believing we could win.

"That is the start. It is very important. It gives you a lot of strength and a lot of energy. Even when we were down 1-0 we still believed we could win. That is crucial.

“When St. Johnstone scored at 2-1 last week I saw all the Rangers players’ heads went down. I was very surprised about that. That was not good. That was not a good reaction for any team. You have to lift your head up and always believe you can turn it around. It is important.”

Huistra has been sad to see the problems which Rangers have encountered in the last few years and is hopeful the new regime can help to turn around the Ibrox club’s fortunes both on and off the park.

“They have to get back to where they were,” he said. “That is what everybody wants and expects and how big the club is. It is up to the people in charge now to make sure it is also possible.

"They have to sort out the finances, appoint the right people and instil a new self-belief where everybody automatically knows the club will be back to its old best.”