Jack Butland not seeking Rangers panic button with Celtic title chase reminder sent in defiant setback stance

His predecessor would have been spitting fire at Rangers’ display in Ayrshire on Saturday night.

But Jack Butland is cut from a different cloth than Allan McGregor and in the aftermath of the day one defeat at Kilmarnock chose a reasoned, calm response to a result that might not have holed the Ibrox title challenge below the waterline, given there are still 37 games to go, but has dented confidence in the stands, if not the dressing room.

Butland made a couple of decent saves on the Rugby Park plastic but couldn’t prevent Brad Lyons pouncing on John Souttar’s error to give Killie the victory and the former England keeper wasn’t delving into his glove bag for excuses afterwards. But nor was he rifling around looking for a big panic button to press. “Performance wise with myself I was pleased with that, but we are part of a team,” he said. “There is no one going home with a smile on their face, that is for sure. It is not the result that we wanted, of course. Performance wise, there are little bits to work on but on the whole we controlled large proportions of the game.

“But it is the first game, nothing is won here, nothing is lost here and there are 37 huge games to go in the league. Everything is still in our control so we are not going to lose heart or the belief that we have got in the building.”

Maybe so, but while Butland hasn’t been in these parts for long, he recognises that with Celtic unlikely to spill too many points, an already slim margin of error has already been trimmed by three points after 90 minutes. And yet, with a dozen points up for grabs when the rivals meet - starting at Ibrox on September 3 - the Rangers No 1’s confidence in his team is unaffected by Saturday’s events.

“No, absolutely not,” he