THE last time Partick Thistle won at Ibrox, Ace of Base, Inner Circle and 2 Unlimited were flying high in the UK charts, Hillary Clinton was merely the First Lady, and Brexit was just something that John Lambie did to the dressing room door after a poor performance from the Jags.

On that night 23 years ago, Thistle assistant manager Gerry Collins compared them to AC Milan, but no one of a Rangers persuasion inside Ibrox was prone to use such superlatives to describe their side’s performance yesterday, despite the comfortable nature of the scoreline in their victory over the side from Maryhill.

There are still deficiencies in this Rangers side, most notably their chronic lack of pace at centre-back ,with Philippe Senderos lucky to last the first half given the rather primitive tactics he employed to halt the runs of Ade Azeez, but what they do have is quality from middle to front.

First-half goals from Niko Kranjcar and Andy Halliday were enough to ease the nerves evident inside Ibrox early on, with the bottom side never looking likely to recover from the second of those blows.

Davie Weir, the Rangers assistant manager, was the man in the dugout as Mark Warburton served his one-match touchline ban after his outburst at Pittodrie, and he was happy to get a victory any which way he could after a couple of difficult weeks.

“We’ve spoke in the last few weeks about performance and probably not got the result, and I think today was more about the result then the performance,” Weir said.

“Ideally you get both, but if we’re honest, which we try to be, then the result was probably more important.”

Thistle were looking confident amid what were unfamiliar surroundings to many of their players early on, and Ryan Edwards might have done better than head straight at Wes Foderingham when he latched onto a bouncing ball 10 yards from goal.

Rangers were screaming for a penalty when Barrie McKay fed Jason Holt inside the area and the midfielder went down under the challenge of Edwards, but referee Stephen Finnie was unmoved.

The home side finally started to exert at least a little pressure with a series of corners midway through the half, but it wasn’t until a moment of magic from Kranjcar that they finally had lift off.

Picking the ball up on the edge of the area, it looked as though the Croatian had lost his chance to get a shot away as he feigned this way and that into what appeared to be a cul-de-sac of Thistle defenders. He managed to shift it one last time onto his right foot though before unleashing a rocket that was in the roof of Ryan Scully’s net before he got his hands in the air.

Seven minutes later it was two, and this time Thistle only had themselves to blame as a horrific lapse from Danny Devine gifted Rangers a chance that they gleefully gobbled up. There appeared little danger as the centre-half collected a header from Liam Lindsay, but he scuffed his attempted pass across midfield, succeeding only in finding the feet of Jason Holt.

The midfielder advanced before feeding Martyn Waghorn, who in turn laid the ball off to the arriving Halliday to rifle low into the bottom corner from the edge of the box.

They say that goals change games, but just as certain is that they change perceptions. In the space of those few minutes, the home support had gone from groaning at the laboured contributions of their players – and Kranjcar in particular – to all being well in their world.

Yet how Thistle didn’t get a goal back at the start of the second half almost defied the laws of physics, as Stevie Lawless split the Rangers defence to release Erskine. The attacker’s shot squirmed under Wes Foderingham, whose touch spun the ball toward the post, where it rebounded back out to the Thistle player. The Rangers keeper did well to get back though and snuff out the opening as Erskine tried to smuggle the ball over the line.

A delightful touch from McKay then saw him spin way from Devine and flash a ball across goal as Rangers looked to kill off any lingering threat of a contest. In truth though, Thistle looked to have little left in the tank in any case, and Rangers seemed happy to let it all rather peter out in the autumnal sunshine after the travails of the last few winless weeks.

For Thistle, it was a familiar story as a decent performance yielded nothing tangible in their battle to get off the bottom.

“We started well enough first-half, but you’ve got take your chances and we never,” said their downcast manager, Alan Archibald.

“It has been a recurrence for us all season with teams not having to work for goals, but to be fair to the lads we got a reaction at half-time. We can’t keep getting decent enough performances and no points, we need to turn it around.”

Rangers deserve credit for a win that had started out as a struggle and ended in somewhat of a stroll, but one thing is for sure, AC Milan they ain’t.