Rangers: Borna Barisic ready for big week

But the Croatian full-back was outstanding in the defeat of St. Mirren at Ibrox on Saturday, even if the first-half performance was at best unsatisfactory as he conceded.

“I’ve never been involved in a game where there were four penalties,” he said.

“I can’t say it was our best performance - but when you are in a title race like we are the most important thing is to get the three points.

“At the end it was 4-0, we created more chance than St. Mirren and now we go to play a very important game at Aberdeen.

“The standards are high at a club like this. The crowd always want us to play good football - but sometimes you can’t manage that every game, such as this one where we were not at the top level.

“However, the key is to win even when you don’t play well - so I think the important thing for us was to get the three points.”

The week ahead could well be a season-defining one for the Light Blues with two crucial away fixtures – as Borna is only too aware.

“It’s a very important seven days for us,” he said. “Aberdeen in midweek and Kilmarnock in the Cup - but we are full of confidence after this result. We will go to Aberdeen and try to win.

“I am always positive, I always want to win. If I didn’t think we could win the title, I wouldn’t play football

“If we are to become champions then we need to go to places like Aberdeen and win.

“If we win the next two games, I think that would set us up very well for the rest of the season. It would give us a great deal of mental belief.

“Aberdeen are a tough team - they have good players and they have proved that because we haven’t managed to beat them on three occasions, but there has to be a first time for everything so why not on Wednesday?

“It wasn’t our best performance against St Mirren - and I think we need to improve the way we start against Aberdeen. In the first fifteen minutes I think we will need to be aggressive and run more and if we do that, then I think we will give them a problem.”

The player has not had his injury problems to seek since signing from Europa League rivals Osijek.

“The most important thing for me is to play all the time and try and play in as many matches as I can because I feel like I have missed half the season through injury,” he said. 

“It’s important to win obviously, but personally for me it’s also important just to get games. It’s been very frustrating.

“I came back from my second injury, played three games and then got injured again against St Johnstone and that made me very unhappy because I knew then that I wouldn’t be able to play against Celtic. The important thing was we won the game - but I was disappointed not to play.

“The manager has spoken to me, we speak a lot. He knows that the tempo of training and matches in Croatia is not the same as in Scotland and that I need to improve my fitness. I have worked hard on it and now I feel very fit.”