JAMES Tavernier will eat the breakfast of champions ahead of today’s lunch date with Queen of the South, but revealed he may be tempted to indulge his sweet tooth if Rangers can make it eight wins in a row. The Ibrox right full-back, whose high-energy bursts have been one of the sensations of the season, is fuelled by a new protein--rich diet, which he is force-fed even before early kick-offs like today.

“Normally you eat football food – your chicken, fish, vegetables and sweet mash,” said Tavernier. “You get used to everything like that, and salads. But one of the things that set us back was the early kick-offs at half 12 because I’ve never done that before. Eating salmon and pasta at half nine or 10 in the morning was quite weird at first but you get used to it. I stick to the same pre-match meal no matter what. It seems to do me well, so I’ll have salmon and pasta for my Sunday breakfast.”

Tavernier was schooled in the football-daft city of Newcastle, but has found himself besieged by Glaswegian well-wishers, even on trips to the supermarket.

“You can’t soak it in quick enough, just how big this club is and the way the fans respond to you in the streets,” he said. “When you’re just going into Asda or through the streets of Glasgow, they’re really happy with how you’re going and have a conversation with you.

“I’ve not had anybody raking in my trolley so far, but I normally go when it’s quiet if I’m buying a few sweets. I only do that after a game when it’s my time to enjoy those kind of treats. The bag I bought the other day had fruit gums and some chocolate digestives, a bit of a mixture but it went nicely after the game.”

It is fair to say Rangers’ results against Queen of the South last season were also a mixed bag. The Doonhamers won twice against them on the artificial surface at Palmerston and ran them exceedingly close in the play-off quarter-finals.

Talk of a bogey team, however, doesn’t tally with the fact Tavernier already has one victory against them this summer. Two weeks before he enlisted at Ibrox, he and Martyn Waghorn were part of a Wigan side under Gary Caldwell which met the Doonhamers in La Manga, racking up a 2-1 friendly victory.

“It’s difficult to judge them on a pre-season game, especially in 35 degrees, but they got on the ball and passed it well,” said Tavernier, a serial loanee who hopes to use his experience to help on-loan youngsters such as Nathan Oduwa, Dominic Ball and Gedion Zelalem settle in at Ibrox. “I was concentrating on Wigan at that point. Nothing happened with Rangers until a few weeks later. But we’re going down with a lot of confidence and hopefully we can replicate what we did on Wednesday [the 5-0 win at Airdrie].”

On the subject of the League Cup, Rangers legend John Brown spoke at the draw this week of his relief that the Ibrox side had avoided the challenge of Celtic. Their eventual tie with St Johnstone at home is no easy matter either but Warburton insisted his side were still in the early stages of their development and he was in no hurry to subject his group to the fervour of an Old Firm derby.

“We met as a group of players and staff on June 27,” said Warburton. “We are in August. We have been together for a matter of a few weeks. That is not being negative in any way. We are not running shy of any challenge. The squad is hungry and their work ethic is absolutely fantastic. But a sense of reality as well is very important.”

Warburton has no time for the bogey ground theory, the superstition that some stadia are somewhat less suitable to one group of players than another. As if to illustrate the point, while his predecessor Ally McCoist often took international weeks off, Warburton is keen to strike while the iron is hot.

“It is important,” said Warburton, “for the fitness and everything else. We just want to keep on.”

Talk linking Rangers with Stevie May refuses to disappear but the Englishman is no fan of wheeling and dealing right up to the deadline. “If you’re leaving it that late to do your business, personally I think there’s a problem,” said Warburton.

Rangers, under the Englishman, continue to go about their business quite nicely thank you.