Surveying the Rangers team sheet an hour prior to kick-off yesterday provoked more questions than answers. Charlie McCann and Leon King? Great, but where are Rabbi Matondo and Glen Kamara? If not now when for Ridvan Yilmaz and Ben Davies? How has Malik Tillman so quickly fallen out of the picture? And primarily, what is the long-term vision?

Wednesday’s team featured nine players signed in or before Steven Gerrard’s first season and none from the most recent transfer window. When asked in midweek on this very detail, Giovanni van Bronckhorst said he “picks the team that he thinks will win the game”.

“I'm not going to pick the team based on selecting three new signings and eight who have been here for ten years. It doesn't work like that. I have two eyes. I can see how the performances are. I can see how they train.”

Playing King and McCann is as it should be. When you promote a first-team pathway that, crucially, must include minutes. But if only one of seven summer signings, with Tom Lawrence’s injury as a caveat, repeatedly impacting the starting 11 seven weeks on from the beginning of the season, it’s fair to question whether the group is stronger after summer or better equipped to regain the league title. Particularly when two nailed-on starters in Joe Aribo and Calvin Bassey have departed. 

A 2-1 win against Dundee United yesterday featured a rare, assertive start at Ibrox before old habits remerged. Rangers continue to look like a team who needed refreshing this summer and are stuck in the same domestic patterns that hampered last season. 

With a home crowd baying for blood following the visiting support’s audible chanting and booing during the minute’s silence held in honour of the Queen, the team responded in the short term before retreating back into periods of ponderous possession.

Ryan Kent and Antonio Colak had chances within the first couple of minutes, Scott Arfield fired over from an area he’d usually convert. The midfield lacked attackers but at least played with some tempo and verve. It wasn’t until an opportunity arose to attack space that the deadlock broke. James Tavernier won a duel aggressively, swallowed up the ground ahead and played a cutback cross into Colak that is very quickly becoming the Croatian’s trademark. Finishing across his body and finding the far corner.

The rest of the half was more recognisable and something of a return to script. Rangers’ proclivity to ponder through these matches rather than build and sustain momentum has been a constant in this past year.

“Mentally it’s difficult when you have three defeats in a row, it can affect you,” the manager reasoned after the game.

“Today at moments in the game it did. When you see the decision-making we had on the pitch wasn’t as it had to be.

“That’s the most difficult thing in moments of stress to keep focusing on your task and play. In moments of the game, you could see we didn’t do that well.

"You could see after we conceded the first goal ‘what ifs’ in the player's minds."

That argument holds water in isolation while not assuaging concerns about wider, systemic domestic concerns.

If often feels van Bronckhorst's focus on control is not conducive to relentlessly breaking down defences. And when Rangers reached offensive areas yesterday the midfield selection, lacking genuine goalscorers, predictably struggled to convert. Alongside the long-term vision and realistic blueprint for success so desired at this stage of the season is free-flowing, offensive play. Football is a results-based industry but also in the business of entertainment.

This Dundee United team arrived at Ibrox bottom of the table having conceded the highest number of chances per 90 league-wide, 2.03xG, and created the lowest, 0.6xG. It’s not controversial to say they have been bad this season. Quite in keeping with the general performance, Rangers' actions in the final third weren’t sharp or instinctive to exploit this and regularly allowed for a defensive recovery of sorts.

Consistently, van Bronckhorst’s shoulders slumped in disappointment at his team’s watery counterpressing which left holes to play through and room to exploit. The visitors didn’t test McGregor all that regularly. They did get into areas that a better team, playing with more confidence, could’ve capitalised upon. 

With a two-week international break bookended by a trip to Tynecastle and Anfield, noises of dissatisfaction could increase quickly. Van Bronckhorst will hope the break can catalyse an imminent upturn but without an improved pace and increased chance creation domestically, the performances he and his team need to attract that long-term supporter buy-in don’t feel any closer.