IT was as close to an admission of a change of heart as Mark Warburton was ever going to give.

“You mean Plan B?” he ventured, in response to a question about the tinkering of tactics that delivered convincing recent wins for Rangers over Aberdeen and Hearts.

He’s smiling, though, as he’s saying it, a nod both to his previous stance to never deviate from his Plan A and to the arrival of the inevitable question he was going to be asked about doing just that.

Call it Plan B, mixing it up, taking a pragmatic stance or whatever: the end result is that Rangers have looked more potent by exploring the option that not every ball into the opposition box has to arrive having previously touched the foot of each outfield player first.

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There were times in both games when a high ball would be launched into the general direction of Joe Garner who would attack it in a manner akin to a lion getting torn into an antelope, only with more aggression and less subtlety.

It seems Rangers’ miserable response to Hearts pressing them high up the park in the teams’ previous meeting at Tynecastle is what has prompted this adoption of an alternative plan, although it probably ought to have been brought in earlier in the campaign when teams were successfully frustrating Rangers by sitting deep and not allowing Warburton’s side to pass through them.

Tomorrow’s match away to Hamilton could bring about a similar challenge and Warburton conceded he now has more than one way to skin this particular cat.

“We have to find solutions,” he said. “Teams press on to us and we weren’t good on the night against Hearts at Tynecastle. We then expected Aberdeen to do it to us and we had to bypass the press and that’s how we did it. We were then very good against Hearts at Ibrox.

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“If a team puts 10 men behind the ball then we have to find answers. If a team presses you up the pitch have to find a solution. If a team narrows its wide players to pick up the second ball, you have to find a solution. It’s part and parcel of the game.”

The deployment of Garner is key to this new way of playing succeeding. Not the tallest at 5ft9, the Englishman makes up for that height deficiency by throwing himself into aerial duels with unrefined zeal.

There are times when arms, legs and torso seem to be all moving in a blur like a Captain Caveman montage, while some of his attempts to win the ball veer between borderline legal to borderline GBH.

His tally of just three goals for the season does not seem plentiful for someone Rangers paid around £1.8m to sign in the summer but the applause he received from the home support as he stumbled off late in Saturday’s win over Hearts suggests his endeavour and application have not gone unnoticed or unappreciated.

“I haven’t heard an ovation like that in 18 months,” added Warburton. “He didn’t score but if you turned up in the 85th minute you’d have thought he scored a hat-trick. It shows you his work-rate, desire and commitment and he chased every ball. Joe is only 5’9” but he wins headers above 6’2” defenders and you see week on week he’s improving.

“An Andy Gray type is probably a good analogy. You see the timing and technique of his leap is very strong. In his first few games we asked him to come short and link up and for runners to go beyond him. It takes time for him to settle and we asked for people to give him a break and I think he’s showing how good he can be. Where we are weak is maybe the physicality but Joe provides that.

“When he played for Preston against us at Brentford our defenders would come off and say what a pain in the backside he was to play against – or words to that effect. Defenders were battered and bruised and said he was a handful. A couple of times they got their own back on him but he didn’t complain. He just dusted himself down and he’s a little old-fashioned in that respect. He can play, his touch is good and he has an eye for goal. That’s why we went after Joe because we knew how good he can be.”

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Warburton, meanwhile, has criticised the media for focusing on Malky Mackay’s controversial past rather than his football credentials ahead of the Scot’s appointment as the SFA’s next Performance Director.

“I've read some shocking statements about Malky,” added the Rangers manager. "I get very disappointed when I see people copying and pasting articles from three-and-a-half years ago. I think that's lazy journalism. But I do know Malky's integrity, I know he's an honest football person. I've watched him work with young players and old players and he's a first-class football man