FORMER Rangers striker Steven Thompson fears lack of match time could hinder Pedro Caixinha’s much-needed swift start to the campaign.

This afternoon the Portuguese will lead his team into friendly battle against Marseille at Ibrox in what will be only the club’s first public friendly of the pre-season.

Two ill-fated games against Progres Niederkorn in the doomed Europa League qualifying have presented the only test for the Glasgow side away from closed-door friendlies.

With just one exhibition game away to Sheffield Wednesday remaining on July 30 before the start of the domestic campaign, it means Rangers will have had just four games under their belt ahead of meeting a Motherwell team that will have played double that between friendlies and Betfred Cup matches.

Celtic will have hit 10 by the time their Premiership defence kicks off.

Thompson has watched his old team with interest since they first came back to pre-season on June 5, and the striker is confident fitness won’t be an issue over the two-month training camp.

However, the former SPL winner has his concerns as to how Caixinha’s squad – filled with nine new faces – will all be on the same wavelength when they line up at Fir Park on August 6.

“It’s impossible to pre-guess if Motherwell will be sharper,” said Thompson. “Caixinha has had the same amount of times to get every one of his players ready for this game. He’s had a big, big turnaround of players. The only worry for me is can you get that continuity quickly?

“Quite often when you bring in this amount of players from different cultures with varying styles of football, it may take a wee while for the players to adjust to Scottish football.

“The one thing for Caixinha he needs to hit the ground running given what happened in the Europa League. There’s a bit a pressure on Caxinha and the players to get off to a good start but it can be difficult with such a change of players to get that continuity quickly.

“He’ll be making sure he’s getting his word across on the training pitch and the work will be getting done.

“I always felt you didn’t get a good feel for it until you were seven or eight games into it anyway. The players will be ready for the first game physically. Everything will have been built for it, I’d be more concerned about whether they can get to know each other and gel instantly.

“You are talking two new centre-halves [Fabio Cardoso and Bruno Alves], a whole new midfield [Dalcio Ryan Jack, Carlos Pena, Graham Dorrans and Daniel Candeias] and it just doesn’t happen. It takes time. That’s the big thing for me rather than sharpness.”

Rangers played St Johnstone again on Tuesday at Murray Park in a closed-doors game that saw them lose 1-0 to Tommy Wright’s men. In what was a glorified training exercise, Thompson admits even the productivity gained from a regular friendly is far more beneficial than bounce matches.

“When I was playing I much preferred when the games started to roll out,” he said. “It’s the best way to get your fitness levels up to where they need to be. You can do all the running and all the physical work in pre-season but that doesn’t get you match sharp.

“It’s important to get game time. It’s also important that a lot of the players get a break so it’s about finding a balance. Look at Kenny Miller, he only had two to three weeks off. You don’t want to rush people into too many games because they didn’t have enough rest.

“Closed doors friendlies are never the same. You work hard and you can try and make it feel like a real game but it’s never the same at all. It’s never going to be the same until supporters are inside the ground, the pressure is on and the nerves are there. In a closed-doors game that’s never going to happen.

“For me they don’t replicate the same environment and intensity. They maybe give people game time who have been out but in terms of getting you super sharp and being right on the ball closed-doors games never really did it for me.”

Rangers pre-season schedule and regime has of course been altered due to that fateful night in Luxembourg City.

Excused from the Betfred Cup group stages as a result of being involved in European competition, the Ibrox club are now playing friendlies like the one today against Marseille to fill the void until they go to Motherwell next month.

Thompson is sure, though, that Caixinha will have used the time on the training ground and in the corridors of Murray Park to prepare his players in other ways, and said: “Most pre-seasons are the same these days.

“If I go back to when I started playing football with Dundee United it was running until you’re sick and running until you can’t run anymore. Most of it was long runs, it’s prehistoric. There wasn’t much thought going into it.

“Now there’s summer schedules for players, sport scientists, nutritionists. What I found in the latter stages of my career was the pre-season was getting easier. The time you were doing run wasn’t as long and the distances were becoming shorter.

“It was all done and monitored a lot better. You never used to worry about recovery when you were doing pre-season as kids, you’d just keep going. Now it’s about more than that.”