Imperfect Rangers have one mission and that’s to swerve a bloody nose before unleashing Bealeball – Barry Ferguson

It may have felt like a long time coming. But now we’ve got this far and the new season is about to kick off, you couldn’t blame Michael Beale if he wanted just a little bit longer to gel his new look together.

That’s the problem when you get around to carrying out the kind of major surgery which has been required at Rangers for some time. And, as impressive as the business in the transfer market has been up until this point, the time for tweaking and adjusting his team has come and gone already. Is Beale’s new look side perfect? Far from it.

He’s still to add Jose Cifuentes into the mix, for example, and having done a bit of homework on the Ecuadorian he looks like a player the manager will be very keen to get into his starting XI. I like the look of this guy – a box-to-box midfielder who can score goals and who looks composed and classy on the ball. He could be a cracker.

Then there’s Danilo who only arrived ahead of the weekend trip to Hoffenheim and who is very unlikely to be up to speed in time to start Saturday’s league opener at Kilmarnock. In a perfect world, Beale would want all his best options available. His squad would have more time to bed in and the new players would have had a chance to properly get to know their team-mates.

The football would be open and expansive and all the parts of the jigsaw would have clicked into place. Without reading too much into pre-season friendlies, that’s not what I expect to see at Rugby Park at tea time on Saturday. I expect it to be a battle. Maybe even a bit of a slog.

But the first step for Beale and his players is to get out of there with three points on the board and get back up that motorway. I’d go as far as to say this is likely to be the story for these first few