Joe Ellis

Thu 29 September 2022 18:10, UK

Rangers will be back in action on Saturday afternoon after the international break with a trip to Tynecastle to take on Heart of Midlothian.

Giovanni van Bronckhorst is looking for a big reaction from his players after a tough run of form leading up to the international break and will go to Edinburgh expecting to see exactly that.

But Hearts boss Robbie Neilson appears to be expecting even more than that from his players as he revealed on Thursday that his players are expected to win every game they play.

“We’ve been waiting for it for a couple of weeks now and we’re really looking forward to the game,” he told Sky Sports. “It’s an opportunity for us.

“We’re sitting three points behind them and if we get a result, we can go ahead of them on goal difference so it’s a massive game for the club.

“We always take it game by game but when we’re playing at Tynecastle, we expect to win every game and it’ll be the same on Saturday.”

As the country’s third-best team, they should be expecting to be able to compete with the Light Blues on their home turf but it is a massive leap to assume that victory is, essentially, in the bag.

The Bears might not be in tip-top form but they are only two points off the top of the league and nine times out of 10, they would beat the Jam Tarts quite easily.

They even proved that last season by heading to Tynecastle with an entirely rotated squad consisting of a swarm of academy players and still beating Neilson’s side.

Rangers should start Saturday’s 12:30pm kick-off as favourites given the quality of players at van Bronckhorst’s disposal but that won’t mean they will assume the three points are already heading back to Ibrox.

Celtic’s surprise defeat to St. Mirren was a timely reminder to every team in the league that there can be no complacency regardless of the opponent.

In other Rangers news, this Light Blues player has not yet played this season but could be out until 2023 after his father shared an update on his condition.