I was heartened to hear Jermain Defoe speaking before the end of the season when he was asked about how he would cope with only having a couple of weeks off this summer before getting back into action.

He said that two weeks rest out in the sunshine and doing what he wants to do was great. But after that he wanted to get back to football again.

Not every player is like that. People might think they are tired after only having two or three weeks off, but most of the players have had a decent break.

A few of the players, like Steven Davis and Borna Barisic, have had international commitments and Scott Arfield and Nikola Katic still have games to play with Canada and the Croatian Under-21s respectively.

Both of them will need to rest once those fixtures are played and that will have an impact on their participation in the early Europa League qualifiers.

You do need a rest at some stage. You can’t just finish one season and then go straight into the next one.

If you have had three or four weeks off, that is enough time for you to relax, recover and then get ready to get back into it again.

Rangers will return to pre-season training next week and Steven Gerrard will expect his players to be raring to go for what could be a really exciting season for us.

There will be more new faces coming into the squad and there is a lot expected of Rangers next term.

The players will be desperate to get back into it again and then they can start the countdown to that first friendly game and then the start of the Europa League. And the first Premiership game won’t be far behind that either.