Rangers respond in style as Alfredo Morelos debut and Aaron Ramsey debut caps 5-0 win over Hearts

From hunted to hunters. It’s not the role reversal that Rangers wanted in this compelling title race but they showed they are up for the challenge of chasing down Celtic at the top of the table with an ultimately emphatic dismantling of Hearts at Ibrox.

Giovanni van Bronckhorst got exactly the response he had called for in the aftermath of his team’s painful 3-0 Old Firm defeat in midweek which had knocked them off the Premiership summit.

The pressure on the champions was cranked up another notch by Celtic’s 4-0 win at Motherwell in Sunday’s earlier kick-off, meaning they kicked off four points behind their great rivals.

But inspired by the returning Alfredo Morelos, whose double took his tally for the season to 15, Rangers routed a Hearts side who will reflect on missing chances of their own at key moments.

There was also a Rangers debut for Aaron Ramsey, the on-loan Juventus midfielder appearing for the final quarter of an hour to further aid the renewed air of positivity around a club who hope he might prove to be their ace in the pack over the closing few months of the campaign.

Given the startling deficiencies of his team’s display at Celtic Park, it was perhaps mildly surprising that van Bronckhorst restricted the number of changes to his starting line-up to just four.

But the quartet who came in - Leon Balogun, Ryan Jack, John Lundstram and Morelos - successfully brought greater balance, cohesion and purpose to Rangers as they replaced Borna Barisic, Glen Kamara, Amad Diall and Kemar Roofe.

The levels of intensity and aggression demanded by the manager, so lamentably absent from their approach in the derby defeat, were evident from the opening moments as they set about making amends in front of their own fans.

Hea