NOBODY in football takes it one game at a time. Not really.

Rangers have three away league fixtures out of their next four. That runs begins with Kilmarnock tonight, Livingston on Sunday, St Mirren then visit Ibrox, and at the end of that it’s a trip up to the always welcoming Pittodrie.

You can only deal with one game but Steven Gerrard surely will be looking ahead and thinking to himself: ‘If we can get through this with 12 points, or ten at the least, that will do me.’

The flip side to this is that Celtic have a relatively simple run and should Rangers’ problems on the road continue..well, this next few weeks is going to be vitally important no matter what happens.

At least, Gerrard has given his supporters hope when none seemed to be around for so long.

The Rangers manager said: “There is confidence, there is belief but I think it’s still too early to make bold predictions. We have a lot of respect for people at the other clubs who are in the running. I still think Celtic are the team to beat and catch.

They have the know-how. They remain the champions as we speak so we are not going to sit here and boast or predict anything that’s too early to predict. What we will say is that we will give it everything we’ve got.

“It’s nice that the fans are in a good place. The players have made them feel really good. There is no harm in dreaming. Of course there’s not.

“But there is still a lot of hard work to do, a lot of tricky games and there will still be some twists and turns and bumps along the way, which we will be prepared for.

“But I’m sitting here happy and positive and confident because I believe we’ve got a good team that is capable of getting in the race.”

Scott Arfield has been superb for Rangers and is one of the main reasons his club find themselves on level points with Celtic.

What he doesn’t want, and he’s speaking for a lot of people, is to play so well against Celtic and then fail to build on the best result of the season.

Arfield said: “When you come so far and you have games coming up, having done the hard work you don’t want any negativity.

“ At this club, you need to win, it doesn’t matter who is staring you in the face. It is up to us to go and win that game and that is what we want to do.

“It is a huge test for us. Kilmarnock have done unbelievably well, I don’t think anyone would have seen them this far up at this stage of the season. But they have consistently picked up results. We have played them twice and they have been two hard games so far.

“As players you don’t really look at a cluster of games over a period. You look at individual games and how hard they are and there are not many harder than away on an artificial surface against them.

“It is going to be a hard game for us but it is one we are looking forward to and we think we can go and win.”