IT has taken Joe Garner a while to adjust to his altered surroundings at Rangers but things aren't all new for him when it comes to being at a big club attempting to live up to former glories.
The 28-year-old, prised from Preston North End for £1.8m back in August, underwent a taster course in this regard during the three seasons which he spent at Nottingham Forest between 2008 and 2011, campaigns which saw the former European Cup winners lose out twice in the play-offs in the quest to return to the English top flight.
Co-incidentally, considering the role Scotland would go on to have on the player's career, the agency of two Scots determined the success or failure of his stint in the East Midlands. While Colin Calderwood lavished £1.2m to take the highly-rated young striker from Carlisle, things all went awry when he was sacked just months into the season and replaced by Billy Davies.
A return to his hometown club of Preston got Garner's career got back on track, even if this archetypal 4-4-2 exponent has struggled to get his head around the different dynamics of Mark Warburton's fluid 4-3-3 shape in the full glare of 50,000 supporters at Ibrox each week who expect the world from a player carrying quite a price tag.
Two goals in his last two games suggests that the hard work is starting to pay off, though, and the striker is targeting more of the same against Ross County on Sunday. Forest, meanwhile, sit just one point out of the SkyBet championship relegation zone, apparently no closer to bringing the glory days back to the City Ground.
"Rangers is a massive club with a massive fanbase, but you just have to get on with it," said Garner. "This is a results-driven business, fans want to see results and they want to see goals. They pay their money and they are entitled to see what they want to watch.
“I don’t think it [the expectation] is unfair," he added. "It doesn’t just happen at Rangers, it happens everywhere all over the world. I just get on with it, work hard, and what will be will be. We’ll find out soon enough if I can handle it, it might take a couple of years!
"I played in front of 30-odd thousand at Nottingham Forest, they are a massive club as well. They won the European Cup and were a top, top side. They’ve been struggling the past few years, but the fans expect them to be up there. When I was there we finished third and fourth and got into the play-offs twice, Blackpool and Swansea beat us and both went up via the playoffs. We had a couple of good years and when you’re up there in the league it’s not too bad, but they are down near the bottom now and I’m sure it’s not the nicest environment."
Strikers as a breed tend to judge themselves by their goals and Garner is no different. The only problem is that so much more is expected of strikers at Rangers than that. Some of Kenny Miller's best work is done when peeling off the front, leaving space for midfield runners and popping up in unexpected areas of the field, and the 28-year-old used his team out of the Ibrox first team to soak up hints and tips from the veteran striker.
“As a striker you’re always judged on your goals, not your all-round play, but the gaffer’s No 9 here tends to come a little bit more towards the ball and the wingers come in too," he said. "But as a striker I think you SHOULD always be judged on your goals and I’ll do all that I can to get as many as a I can. If that [20 a season] is the going rate then I’ll have to try and get there! I know if I can get into the box then Mikey [O'Halloran] and Tav [James Tavernier] will be putting the crosses in and hopefully I can get on the end of them.
“I think the little bit of time where I was on the bench has helped me massively, just watching the games and watching how Kenny plays up there," he added. "Looking at his movement off the ball has benefited me massively, and hopefully we’ll see the results of that. If you see Kenny out on the training ground then you’d say he can probably play anywhere. He’s a top footballer."
Garner claims to lead a quiet existence at his new club: "I just stay in, I don’t go out. I’m on the outskirts of the city, so I leave them all to it," he says and savoured the scenery on the road up to Inverness enough that he isn't dreading the drive up to Dingwall.
"Ross County are a better side than their recent results would suggest and he will come into close contact with a few echoes of his past life in the form of Jay McEveley, with whom he shared a dressing room at Blackburn, and Andrew Davies, former adversary in the game south of the border. Garner is one of those strikers who rarely wastes little time renewing acquaintance.
"He [Davies] was at Middlesbrough and Bradford so I’ve played against him a few times and I’ll look forward to the battle," said Garner. "I was also at Blackburn with Jay McEveley, who is a good player. He’s had a good career, so I’ll look forward to the battle against him too. I’m looking forward to hopefully taking three points as well.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here