The retreat from defeat at Celtic Park was necessarily short. Ally McCoist, an Old Firm veteran, sat in the Rangers HQ of Murray Park yesterday and handed out casualty lists and reports on morale. He exhibited a strong belief in his squad's ability to fight back from a reverse. The Rangers assistant manager is, after all, an old soldier. He accepts that Old Firm games can end in disappointment.

However, McCoist knows Rangers face 10 days that could witness a march to glory or a stumble towards fearful failure. The Ibrox men face St Johnstone in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup on Sunday, then tackle Fiorentina in the first leg of the UEFA Cup semi-final on Thursday. Celtic await at Parkhead a week on Sunday.

Rangers, too, will have to tackle this assault course without Lee McCulloch and Allan McGregor who were both injured in Wednesday's defeat at Parkhead. David Weir is suspended for the St Johnstone match. More grievously, Carlos Cuellar, Rangers' defensive stalwart, will miss the re-engagement at Parkhead.

McCoist was sanguine about the captain, Barry Ferguson, who seemed to be missing in action at Parkhead. "I might just say that he looks as though he is struggling because we got beat," said McCoist. "I am not sure we would be talking about this if we had not lost a goal in the last couple of minutes. I know Barry - Barry will be fine.

He is a solid citizen. He wants to win more than anybody. He would be honest if his injury was hindering him, but I don't see a real problem."

McCoist, with the experience of a veteran, diplomatically defused any attempts to continue the acrimony that saw the Old Firm match end with punches between players.

"I don't see any needle at all," he said. "We were beaten fair and square last night and we will just get on with it. We look to the next game. It's fish and chip paper now as far as I am concerned."

He was chipper about the problem of burn-out'. "It is a problem we have to address because we are going to have to play the games," he admitted of a fixture backlog. But he added: "I am not overly concerned because I believe we have a squad of players that can handle it. One of the reasons we have the problem is we are doing well. We can't have it both ways."

But can the Rangers squad handle the pressure? "It is a question that must be levelled at them at some stage of the season," McCoist reasoned. "They have answered all the questions up until now.

I don't have any doubts that they will keep answering them positively. I, along with the gaffer and Kenny McDowall, the first-team coach, know them as well as anybody and there are a lot of strong, strong characters in that dressing room."

He added: "There is a real togetherness. In our team, that is a big factor, a big plus. You learn a lot more about your team when you lose. But I predict what our team will do: roll our sleeves up and get right into it. The manager said last night that we've never said that the league campaign was over, but certain sections of people have said it was. The league was never over, never at any stage was it over."

The message communicated, McCoist said his troops had a secret weapon in Walter Smith, the old warhorse.

"The boys will look to the manager as he has been over the course and distance on numerous occasions," he said. "The great thing about the manager is, genuinely, that if we had won last night he would be the same man this morning as he was when he walked in after losing. That's a talent and it is a great thing for the players to look at."

The lesson was that Smith can treat triumph and disaster as imposters. McCoist, too, emphasised the need for calm in the line of fire. "There is no use worrying about things you cannot change," he said of a game now lodged in history. "There's plenty of other things you can worry about, things you can change."

It is a philosophy he has taken into the dugout. The first lesson he learned in his role as an assistant manager was that the troops have to do the fighting.

"Once the first whistle goes, there is not much I can do about it," he said. "It might sound an obvious thing, but you don't really appreciate it. As a player on the park or on the bench you always felt you could do something about the game. You can do things before the game - setpieces, corners, tactics, whatever - but once the first whistle blows, it's the players."

He has relished, however, being in the front line, citing 'a genuine love'' for the game. "I am very surprised but I am delighted," he said of the move to Rangers as a coach. "I dreamed about doing this. It's something I always wanted to do."

And what kind of an experience has it been? "It is genuinely a rollercoaster," he said. "I have a lot of highs - the CIS Cup, the steady progression of the team, the European run - and there have been lows and massive disappointments such as Wednesday's game. Maybe that's not a bad thing - it's all part of the learning curve."

The positive note was to be expected. The trusty lieutenant is not given to panic.