STEVEN GERRARD was relieved a lacklustre Rangers ended their barren run on the road as they survived a scare against Hamilton.

The Light Blues ran out 4-1 winners at the Hope Stadium thanks to goals from Ryan Kent and Alfredo Morelos either side of two James Tavernier penalties.

But Rangers had to rally in the final minutes after Steven Boyd had equalised for Accies and threatened to deny them victory on the road for the fifth time this term.

Gerrard said: “Performance-wise, we weren’t at it today. We weren’t great but I’m pleased with the three points and the result because all the talk before the game was about our away record and how we hadn’t had a win for eight months.

“The points were the most important thing for me but I wasn’t pleased with our display, to be honest.

“Is that the word (character) you’d use? I think we were actually frightened when they equalised – that basically gave us the rocket we needed because, at 1-0 up, we were too casual and I didn’t feel comfortable on the sidelines.

“I always felt that they were going to have one opportunity or one decision that could have proved costly in terms of that win slipping from our grasp.

“But their goal scared us a bit and that sparked us into life. We then went on to win comfortably but 4-1 flattered us.”

Rangers had dropped points against Aberdeen, Motherwell, Celtic and Livingston away from home before the trip to Lanarkshire.

Gerrard’s side are now up to fifth place in the Premiership standings but the Ibrox boss wasn’t satisfied with the performance against Accies.

He said: “It came on the back of an international break, it was on a plastic pitch and maybe this wasn’t the juiciest of fixtures for players to motivate themselves for but you have to be up for it. There are loads of factors but those are the ones at the forefront of my mind.

“Was the away record preying on their minds? I don’t know – you’d need to ask them. I said before the game that this was a great opportunity for us to prove we’re capable of winning on the road and we’ve done that. We’re away to St Mirren next and, if we perform like we did today, then it’ll be tricky again.

“Well I think we played better against Motherwell and against Aberdeen but we came away dropping points.

“As a manager sometimes you've got to accept that it might not always look great, especially on the back of Hearts and Rapid when it was sensational. Maybe I'm wanting that type of performance and it's never going to be like that.

“The sign of a good team and a team that's developing is that when they're not at it and not performing to the maximum they can still win a game.”