The argument being made by the statistics is plain enough, but Ally McCoist would no doubt make a retort or two of his own.

Since he succeeded Walter Smith as Rangers manager last summer, the team has continued to amass a series of impressive facts and figures in the Clydesdale Bank Premier League, particularly away from home.

There might be a readiness to assume that McCoist is, in all the measurable ways, working to the same values as his predecessor.

At Tynecastle on Sunday, McCoist sent out his side in a 4-1-4-1 formation. Lee McCulloch, an abrasive figure, sat in front of the back four while Sasa Papac, a defender, played on the left of midfield.

Maurice Edu, a midfielder more useful for his ranginess than his creativity, played on the other flank. The impression was of a formation and approach designed to restrict the opposition, to be tight and miserly.

If Hearts managed to scale the barricades too often for the manager’s liking -- Allan McGregor, the Rangers goalkeeper, was required to make several stubborn blocks -- the tactics eventually brought the visitors a 2-0 victory.

Seven months have passed since Rangers were last defeated in the league, a run of 22 games that includes 19 victories and 17 clean sheets. They have not conceded a goal in six away games this season, but have scored 14 and haven’t lost on their travels in eight months.

If they win their next two away games, at Aberdeen and Kilmarnock, they will match a club record that has stood for more than 90 years.

Rangers fans would occasionally identify a cautious nature in Smith that was their sole cause for grievance in a manager who delivered trophies with an uncanny regularity.

Having played under Smith at Ibrox, and spent seven years working alongside him with Scotland and then Rangers, McCoist would naturally be deeply influenced by his mentor’s attitudes.

But the portrayal of McCoist as a manager who is just another version of Smith is flawed. Whenever he is asked about how his approach differs from his friend and predecessor, McCoist’s response still carries the tone and solemnity of a tribute.

He talks of wanting to emulate Smith’s ability to build teams whose strongest characteristic is always a stern will to win, a hard-headedness that contributes to the grinding out of results.

As Rangers manager, though, McCoist has shown a willingness to adopt a bolder strategy at times. Although McCulloch has missed much of the campaign through injury, it is unlikely that the defensive midfielder would have disrupted the central axis of Steven Davis and Edu, two players who cover more ground and push higher up the park than their colleague.

Under McCoist, Davis has also not been played on the right of midfield, where he was often deployed by Smith in favour of two more dogged figures in the centre.

Once his contract extension was agreed, Gregg Wylde has played regularly under McCoist, even although the 20-year-old is still a greenhorn, a quick winger, who can sling over a decent cross but has still to refine his decision-making and develop a wider appreciation of the work that can be done on the flank.

The signing of Lee Wallace, a left-back whose athleticism and willingness to gallop forward on the overlap mirrors the tendencies of Steven Whittaker on the opposite side, also provides a greater attacking thrust than the steady security of Sasa Papac.

Smith was never as obsessed with a defensive mindset as his detractors claimed. It was a sense of pragmatism that shaped his thinking, and McCoist is similarly grounded.

Both inherently understood that in the roughhouse world of the Old Firm, idealism and style and philosophy can be dismissed as loose talk once the prizes are being contested.

Passion for the game runs so deep in Glasgow that no fan is insusceptible to a bout of romantic thinking, but holding up a principle about playing attacking football looks quaint if the manager across the city is wielding the trophies.

McCoist is too shrewd to be drawn into making glib statements about his work. He has absorbed the lessons of Smith, and most emphatically the understanding that a team must be solid and uncompromising if it is to last the course.

But he is prepared to allow, on occasion, some breathing space to an urge to be adventurous. When Nikica Jelavic came off the bench at Tynecastle, he scored after collecting a long cross-field pass over the top of the Hearts defence.

It was a ploy McCoist had specifically instructed his men to use at half-time, having identified a weakness in the home side’s formation.

It was also confirmation that the old instincts of the club’s record goalscorer are still sharp.