STEVEN GERRARD had to pick up the pieces after a smash and grab win that left the season shattered at Ibrox.

Now, the picture is very different for Rangers as they look to avoid the kind of defeat that has cost them so dear during the last two campaigns.

When Hamilton travelled to Ibrox in March, they expected to feel the wrath of a Rangers side that had just been beaten in the Scottish Cup by Hearts.

Instead, they would pile on the misery as David Moyo clinched an historic and astonishing win that saw the pressure really mount on Gerrard and his players.

Accies will return this afternoon knowing that Rangers are a very different prospect these days. But the memories of their last meeting there will serve as the perfect warning to Gerrard's side if they dare underestimate the importance of the fixture.

“It was certainly a low, for sure,” Gerrard said. “I don’t want to pay Hamilton a disservice because they deserved the result and football is football.

“If you don’t take your chance, if you are not clinical in front of goal and you don’t show that hunger to go and score goals, it can come and bite you on the backside.

"That is what happened that night. It was a smash and grab.

"You have to pay Hamilton respect, they came to Ibrox, done a job and took three points away from us. But it was certainly a low from our point of view.”

The side that Gerrard sends out this afternoon could easily be almost the same as the one that was so abject that night.

George Edmundson and Florian Kamberi will obviously not feature, but the remaining nine of the line-up are key players for Gerrard, who introduced Ryan Kent, Jermain Defoe and Brandon Barker off the bench in an attempt to salvage the situation at Ibrox.

That was perhaps as angry as the home crowd had been last term and Gerrard knows Rangers can't afford a repeat as they look to maintain their momentum and advantage in the Premiership title race.

“That is my job,” he said. “My job is to manage people, but before I manage people I have to manage myself.

“You know, the next day was a new day and we had to move on and try and lift people. That is what I get paid to do.

“It was certainly a disappointing time for us as a group together and we don’t want to experience that again.

“So it is important that we go into this fixture with the right attitude and mentality and I am sure we are going to go and create a lot of chances because we have got that type of player in the squad and the group.

“It is about us trying to execute in front of goal and taking maximum points. It is a new game, we have to forget about what has happened in the past and what will happen in the future.”

The names may be the same but the levels are very different eight months on.

There is a determination and drive about the way in which Rangers are operating this season and an Accies win today would be even more of an upset than it was in March.

“I think it is probably a combination of different factors to be honest, but there has definitely been a shift in the mindset,” Gerrard said when asked what the difference was between Rangers then and now.

“The players have come back after lockdown really hungry and in the zone and they have come back looking as if they want to learn from their experiences together.

“The hunger is there. They know, we know, because we have lived it twice in terms of the two league campaigns what we have to do and what we can’t afford to happen.

“I have been really pleased with the mindset and application from the players but we need to show that we can continue this, need to show that we can go the distance and the only way to do that is to keep this level of consistency going.”