Smith warns Rangers not to lose focus in chase for goals

Rangers manager Walter Smith has warned his players they must not risk blowing the Scottish Premier League title in a desperate chase for goals.

After Wednesday’s 1-1 draw at Hibernian, Smith’s side are behind leaders Celtic on goal difference with only two matches to play.

Celtic’s goal difference is two better than Rangers, who host Aberdeen on Saturday before their Glasgow rivals face Hibernian on Sunday.

Two big wins could be enough to land Rangers the title even if Celtic also take six points, but Smith knows a gung-ho approach could allow their opponents to score on the break.

“I don’t think we would ever consider the fact that we would get any easy games,” he said. “Aberdeen have been difficult opponents for us over the period of time that I’ve been back.

“That will be a hard enough game for us and we just have to approach it in the manner that we can hopefully take advantage of the fact that we’re at home and go and try to win the game.

“We have to approach the game in the right manner and approach it from the fact that we will hopefully win the match.

“We’ve only lost one league game since the turn of the year so we go into tomorrow’s game with a level of confidence and hopefully if we create as many opportunities as we did against Hibs, we can take them.

“It’s just a matter of making sure we have the right approach and hopefully we win.”

Having played Dundee United on Tuesday, Celtic have two more days to prepare for a massive weekend than Rangers, who host Aberdeen three days after their trip to Edinburgh and Smith admitted his club had questioned the scheduling.

“Our complaint was a fairly simple one,” Smith said. “For anyone who is organising fixtures, if a team is playing on a Tuesday they would play on a Saturday and the team playing on the Wednesday would play on the Sunday.

“That, for me, would be normal. We only asked why that wasn’t the case.

“But we are playing Wednesday and Saturday and we get on with it and we look forward to the game.”