STEVEN GERRARD has been giving his reaction to RangersTV after his side opened up season 2020-21 with a 2-1 bounce game win over Hamilton Accies.
Calvin Bassey cancelled-out Ronan Hughes’ goal in the first-half before Alfredo Morelos netted a late penalty to win the game for Gers on the back of a dominant second half.
The manager was pleased to get minutes in the legs of the bulk of his squad today, with two glamour friendly matches to come next week at the Trophee Velolia against Lyon and Nice.
When asked, firstly, how the game went from his perspective:
"It's a long time not to play football so in your first game back you are always looking at what you got out of it and we have got some real, valuable minutes into the players' legs.
"It was a really good workout and I thought Hamilton came and were very professional and made us work for the win.
"But the win is not important today - it is more about getting players through the first game and getting the cobwebs off and getting them a feel for real football as it doesn't matter how much you rehearse on a training pitch, until you get your kits on and you see the referees, pre-season gets parked up and it is for real.
"So I am pleased with a lot of it, but there is still a lot of work to do.
"I thought we were very slow out the blocks - that can be normal as players are a little bit rusty and the cobwebs are on there.
"We have conceded a sloppy goal and what that does is give Hamilton a big lift, something to fight for and something to hang onto.
"We know in this league, if we give teams like that a head-start, the challenge becomes more complicated but I thought we showed character and a lot of courage to get back into the game and we should have won it by more goals - we have had chances and I thought there were a lot more positives on the second half than the first-half."
How, generally, pre-season has gone so far for the manager:
"The first 10-days to two weeks were quite frustrating as we had to work in small groups and we had to do three or four sessions a day and it was non-contact.
"That is not normality - but it was nice to see the players and get back into a routine and be back at the training ground to get that step-closer to playing football.
"The last couple of weeks have been better as we have been able to train properly and we have been able to do a lot of tactical and 11v11 stuff, and you can see signs of how we want it to look when it comes down to that first game.
"We are a lot more content and happy now working for real."
On pre-season matches with Lyon and Nice next week which were confirmed today:
"It has been really tough to arrange friendlies in the pre-season with the Coronavirus, so to get teams of the level of Lyon and Nice to test ourselves against is valuable for us, especially going into Aberdeen on the first game of the season.
"They will be tough tests - the physicality will go up, the mobility and the quality of the opposition will go up with all due respect and we need to be ready for that.
"But the 45 minutes today will certainly help the players and get them ready for that, and we also have [Ryan] Jack and [Steven] Davis available who are two key members of the team."