RANGERS boss Giovanni van Bronckhorst touched on a number of topics at the end of the 2-1 pre-season friendly win over Blackpool.

Here is what he had to say on new signing Malik Tillman, the game itself and those sidelined with injury.

You’ve signed Malik Tillman, can you tell us about his qualities?

We lost Joe Aribo. We want to have the same squad as last year so with Malik arriving we have it looking as it should be. He is a midfielder with a lot of good passing, good movement and can score goals. He is quite physical so he will give us a lot of strength in there. We now have a really competitive squad and we want competition for positions. Of course, when we knew of the interest in Joe we moved quickly to Malik. We spoke with him a couple of weeks ago, that’s why he has a good feeling to come here. I’m happy he is joining us and he is excited about starting.

What were your thoughts on the game?

I think we played really well. With the support we had, it was as if we were playing at home, it gives us so much extra energy and we played at a much better pace than last week in Portugal. You could see we were much, much fitter. For some players, it was their first game of pre-season and I was really happy nearly everyone could feature and get minutes. We prepare now for a big week because we are playing two really good quality opponents. After that, we prepare for the start of the season.

Rangers Review:

Are players like Morelos, Sakala and Alex Lowry any closer to featuring?

Morelos is doing partial training with the team now, Filip is still not training with us he had a setback so we have to wait and see how that is developing. Fashion got a knock in training on Thursday. He trained Friday but wasn’t feeling 100 per cent so we decided not to take him. Alex is still in recovery.