THE pre-season friendly against Bury at Ibrox tonight will be a barometer of the excitement levels among the Rangers support following the appointment of Steven Gerrard as manager.

Around this time last year, when Pedro Caixinha was still in situ, the Glasgow club took on a visiting Marseille team on a Saturday afternoon in front of a crowd of little over 20,000.

Over 35,000 tickets had been sold for the meeting with English League Two opponents in Govan yesterday and the attendance is expected to be up around the 40,000 mark.

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It will be an immediate indication of the intense scrutiny the former Liverpool and England midfielder and his players will be under in the forthcoming 2018/19 campaign.

But Connor Goldson, one of seven players who Gerrard has brought in since taking over at the start of last month, is undeterred by the huge interest there is in Rangers as a consequence of their high-profile manager and his summer signing spree.

“I’m sure it’ll be a great occasion for myself,” he said. “I haven’t been to Ibrox yet. I didn’t want to until I played. I’ve heard all about Rangers fans and it makes me excited.

“Our crowd can only be a positive, like an extra man when they get behind you. But we need to give them something to cheer about, which can only be useful to us in the long run.”

Goldson, bought from Premier League club Brighton for £3 million, has only played in 45 minutes of a game for Rangers, against Welsh minnows The New Saints behind closed doors at the Hummel Training Centre on Tuesday, to date.

Yet, the centre half is confident the fans who will flock through the turnstiles and in the coming weeks this evening won’t be disappointed by what they witness from their new-look team even though they have only been working under Gerrard for a brief time.

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“They can expect energy, they can expect an exciting style of football that requires the players to work hard,” he said. “I think the fans will buy into that. I think the fans want to see players work hard, giving everything.

“That is one of the main things the manager has put across. He wants everyone to go flat out for 90 plus minutes and he wants them to come off the pitch drained and dead on their feet. That is something we are going to have to do if we do that fans will be on our side.

“Obviously, we know we will have ups and downs during the course of a season, but if the fans know you are giving 100 per cent in every single game they will only be with you.

“In the closed doors game the other day we looked good, we looked like we knew what we were doing. It wasn’t off the cuff at all. The team structure was brilliant. Hopefully we can take that into the Bury game.

“We were expected to beat TNS. But we moved the ball at a quick tempo and the way we wanted to play – the pressing style and the way we went after them - came across well. In the 45 minutes I played, I was impressed by the team work.”

The appointment of Gerrard was derided by many due to his inexperience as a manager - the then 37-year-old had only spent little over a season in charge of the Liverpool under-18 side when he was brought in.

But Goldson has enjoyed working under his countryman and revealed the players had responded well and immediately to his sessions.

“The messages have been simple, but clear and that is the main thing that you want as a player,” he said. “You don’t want things to be complicated, to come away from meetings or training thinking there has been too much information and you haven’t been able to take certain bits of it in.

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“As a footballer you want to play the right way, and the manager and the coaching staff so far have shown us that they want the game played in the right way.

“The manager has shown us how he wants us to defend and said to us that if we defend this badge like our life depends on it we will keep clean sheets.”

Goldson is widely expected to form a central defensive partnership fellow new arrival Nikola Katic and he admitted he had been impressed with the Croatian internationalist.

“He is a nice person,” he said. “He is quite quiet off the pitch. It is difficult for Nikola coming from a different country over to here, but he has settled in well. He looks very good in training. He is aggressive and he likes to defend, which is good.

“I think as a centre half you need to build a partnership and every single week you want to keep a clean sheet because that is what our job is based on. I like the fact he wants to defend, he doesn’t like conceding goals and he is very similar to myself.”

He doesn’t envisage England and Croatia facing each other in the World Cup semi-finals if they can overcome Sweden and Russia respectively in their quarter-finals this weekend.

“Hopefully England can keep on going strong,” he said. “If that happens I will support England and he will support Croatia.”