Did Rangers miss a squad opportunity on Saturday?

With the win over Kilmarnock on Saturday, Rangers got the job done with three points on the board.

That’s what matters.

It was a game the Gers were rightly expected to win, but it came after a hectic international period and the impact on the players was visible.

Given the malaise in the second half, did Rangers and Derek McInnes squander an opportunity at Ibrox on Saturday?

The manager opted for the same team that convincingly beat Celtic at Parkhead. Fair enough.

At half-time, with Dujon Sterling struggling with illness, he was replaced by Kosta Nedeljkovic.

The next change was Findlay Curtis, in place of Kevin Kelsy on 73 minutes.

Tochi Chukwuani, then Badredine Bouanani and Bojan Miovski were introduced for the dying minutes, but should these changes have come sooner?

There’s a good case for that.

Kilmarnock had the upper hand in the second half, with five shots on target compared to Rangers’ zero.

One goal was the least they deserved, but thankfully the 3-0 scoreline at half-time was enough to kill the game for the hosts.

It would have been useful to give 20-30 minutes to the likes of Bouanani and maybe Chukwuani or Nedeljkovic.

McInnes talked about his decisions to repeat his starting line up , and perhaps he thought the team was in a better condition than they actually were.

What matters is that the game was won. The standard preparations can follow for Dundee with a regular week ahead – and no midweek fixture – before the journey to the City of Discovery.

“I think it’s something for me to think about going forward, said McInnes in the post-match press conference after Kilmarnock.

“I know the break’s not going to be this long again, but if you dick about with a team too much, and you change it from a winning team, and you’re not quite the same, then you think there’s too many changes.

“But equally, you go with the same team, and it’s a team that’s been working, but there’s that aspect that we had to consider.

“And I needed to be convinced of how the players were when they started coming in dribs and drabs on Thursday, and we were only getting together all yesterday.

“I was convinced, seduced maybe, that everything was fine and good to go. But I actually think, in the hindsight of the game, there was maybe a lot of mental fatigue there in the performance. But I’m not talking about dropped points here.”

Onward to Dundee on Saturday night.