STUART McCALL, the interim Rangers manager, last night admitted fearing he'd walked into an impossible situation at the club when his first two games ended in draws against the Championship's bottom two teams.
He described the results, both at Ibrox, against Livingston and Alloa as "s****" and his one consolation was that it reminded him of what a dreadful start he made with Scotland as part of the Gordon Strachan era, something the coaching team were quickly able to rectify.
McCall was in a relaxed mood as he discussed tonight's home play-off tie against Hibernian, a match he insisted was not a must-win given that there would be a second opportunity at Easter Road on Saturday if things did not go as planned.
But the former Motherwell manager was anything but calm after his first two games back at the club he served so well as a player went very wrong.
Asked about those fraught few days in March, just as he and Kenny Black had taken over from Kenny McDowall, McCall said: "You know what it took me back to? When we took over at Scotland.
"That first game for me, Gordon and Mark (McGhee) was Wales at home and everyone thought we could still survive the campaign and we were f*****g rotten. The first 30 minutes were the worst I've ever been involved in football since I was two years old. We just couldn't pass to each other.
"Then we went to Serbia on the Tuesday and lost there as well. Two games. S***e. So you're thinking: 'What have we let ourselves in for?' and then, football can change so quickly and we built the confidence on the back of a good result in Croatia.
"That's what I grasped onto, really, after the first two draws against the bottom two teams in league. All right, it was s***e, but there can still be light at the end of the tunnel. The next result helped to get that."
The result McCall spoke about was a win against Hibernian in Edinburgh in what was easily the best performance by Rangers up until that point.
If McCall's side are to progress past the men from Leith over the next two games, and then beat Motherwell to secure promotion to the Scottish Premiership, it will be that afternoon when Rangers won 2-0 that turned around their entire season.
"Before that game, Lee Wallace did the press and said the team's morale was at an all time low," said McCall. "Kenny and myself were only in the door two minutes. We wanted to hit the ground running but we'd had two draws against the two bottom sides.
"So going into the Hibs game the team was low in confidence. Lee said it himself. He said he was at his lowest point. Winning that game, for us, was huge. It gave everyone real belief in each other and gave everyone a real lift."
Lee McCulloch returns to the squad, but the team is unlikely to change from the one that began last Sunday's match. Hibernian have been able to take more than two weeks off, which may hand them an advantage.
"We haven't named the team or worked on the team shape because we just haven't had enough time," said McCall. "We've been recovering whereas I think Hibs will have been preparing. That was the only advantage Hibs will probably have from it is that our preparation time has been cut short.
"I've heard a little bit about us needing to take a lead over there. I don't follow that. We're as capable of winning at Easter Road as we are at home, and they'll think the same.
"I've just watched the game when we played them at home and got beat 2-0. I was a TV analyst at that game. In the first half Rangers did well, we had one off the line, the goalie made a good save. So I don't think there's a lot between the sides.
"It's certainly not a case of it being 15 minutes to go and we desperately need to go to Easter Road with a victory. Obviously it would be nice.
"We will be ready. We'll have a meeting and go through things about how we're going to play. Sometimes 18 days can be too long without a game, sometimes it's ideal. We'll only find out over the course."
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