Judgments shouldn’t be made on the back of one result however impressive that one result may be but it looks like St Johnstone are in safe hands.
With the exception of Owen Coyle, several Perth managers have tried and failed to take anything away from Ibrox over the last few decades but rookie boss Steve Lomas has ticked that box in his first game in charge.
Even if the runaway SPL leaders and reigning champions had grabbed a trademark late winner to deny Saints on Saturday, the prognosis for the McDiarmid Park club would still be the same.
That’s because the Rangers match highlighted two vital components for a successful manager his own tactical nous and a team’s willingness to go the extra mile for him.
The fact that Rangers were reduced to just a few efforts on target in the whole contest and had to wait until the 86th minute for their first corner shows that Lomas deployed his players perfectly.
And as far as the player-manager relationship is concerned, the evidence in Glasgow and the message from the dressing room is that the former Northern Ireland international has inherited the respect earned by his predecessor Derek McInnes.
Comeback midfielder Murray Davidson said: ”It’s a great start for the manager and we’ll look to build on this. Training has a great tempo about it under him and Tommy (Wright) and is very competitive. We’re all buzzing and trying to impress.
”He was left a good basis by Derek and Tony (Docherty) and he’s not changed things too much. But he’s putting his own stamp on things as well and he’s already shown he’s a very positive man.
”The manager said it was all about what we did and I felt we won a lot of the individual battles.
”He said at half-time ‘believe’. In the first half they had one shot. We wanted to keep it tight for the first 20 in the second half but we did more than that and as the game went on we grew in confidence.
”We’ll take a point happily enough but if you look at the second half we could have won it. We definitely deserved at least a draw and maybe if we’d taken a bit more care with the final pass we would have taken all three points.
”Before this season we hadn’t got a point at Celtic Park or Ibrox in our two years back in the SPL. Now we’ve got a win and a draw and two clean sheets as well.
”We won’t get carried away. It will still be game by game and we’ll see where that takes us.”
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There was a controlled aggression about Saints which prevented Rangers from producing any flowing football in the first half and prompted Ally McCoist to swap his seat in the stand for the pitchside technical area earlier than is his habit.
Most would have expected the home team to emerge after the break and take more of a grip on the game but the opposite happened. It was a sign of the visitors’ growing confidence that Davidson came close with a 20-yarder on 47 minutes and then he forced a tip over the bar from Allan McGregor with a looping header three minutes later.
Fran Sandaza also tested the Scotland keeper just after the hour mark, after he left Steven Whittaker and Dorin Goian trailing in his wake.
Steven Anderson and Frazer Wright dealt with dangerman Nikica Jelavic as well as any SPL centre backs have this season and on the one occasion he got the better of the Saints duo Peter Enckelman produced a fine save low to his left to keep out a header.
A Rangers winner wouldn’t have been merited, as McCoist admitted.
He said: ”I was very, very disappointed in how we played. We didn’t threaten their goal often enough. St Johnstone deserve to be where they are in the league. I’m sure Steve will continue where Derek left off.
”I was suitably impressed, but not surprised, by how they played.”
Meanwhile, Davidson, who hadn’t started a match since the end of August, said adrenaline kept him going in the latter stages as his long lay-off began to take effect.
He said: ”It’s been a while since my last full game the win at Celtic Park. I’ve just had a couple of bounce games and substitute appearances since my knee injury.
”I was starting to feel it in the last 20 but I just dug in and got through it. When you’ve worked as hard as we did you don’t want to be the one that drops a runner or costs the team a goal. You keep going for your team-mates and your manager.
”I knew my knee was fine because I’d built it up over the last couple of months. Looking back, the Aberdeen game getting called off was probably a good thing for me. It gave me another full week’s training to get me ready for Rangers.”
Photo David Cheskin/PA Wire