SCOTT ARFIELD admits life at Rangers has exceeded his expectations after leaving behind the Premier League to star for Steven Gerrard’s side.

The midfielder has made an immediate impact for the Light Blues this term and took his tally for the season to six with a strike against Livingston at the weekend.

Now he has set his sights on a victory over Villarreal this evening that would give the Gers a real chance of reaching the knockout stages of the Europa League.

Arfield said: “The whole thing has exceeded my expectations, to be honest. You are obviously brought up with these two huge clubs in Glasgow, but until you wear that badge you don’t really get a full judgement on it. Everyone thinks they know you and your life gets scrutinised.

“I’ve had ex-team mates who have worn this badge and told me about it but it’s like everything – until you are in those shoes on daily basis you don’t realise how big this club is.

“For the foreign lads, it does take time to realise that everything gets judged on a daily basis. The badge carries everywhere.

“You get fully judged on your performances and rightly so. It has exceeded every expectation I had in an incredible way. You need to experience it to realise what a privilege it is to wear the badge.

“It was more of a gradual thing. It’s as much away from the park as well.

“As I say, everyone thinks they know you and that’s fine. Everyone who comes here will feel exactly the same and you are fully aware of it.

“You get judged by wearing that badge and you can never take it off because you are a Rangers player.

“The club is full of tradition and success over the years and you can’t get away from that. The dressing room is full of men who fully get that.

“On the pitch, it takes time to settle in and it takes a while for the foreign lads to get used to the environment. Some games in Scotland aren’t as pretty as European football.

“Now we’re into the back end of November, I think everyone gets it and realises what a chance we have to be successful here.”

The deal for Arfield was a significant coup for Rangers in the summer as the midfielder returned to Scotland after eight years south of the border with Huddersfield and Burnley.

The Clarets were also in the Europa League qualifiers this summer but could only reach the third round after narrowly overcoming Aberdeen.

Rangers are dreaming of progression from Group G to cap a remarkable continental campaign and Arfield is confident Villarreal can be beaten at Ibrox.

He said: “They (Burnley) went out against Olympiakos. Exactly, come quarter to ten [tonight] hopefully I have got the right result to back up my judgement.

“The noise which is going to be generated against this team and by the way what a team this is. Particularly in the first half – but even in the second half – they kept the ball so well and their rotation was phenomenal.

“It was a wake-up call, back to Premier League days because the players were so technical and so gifted. You give them as much respect as possible but hopefully not too much.

“We are at our best when we go after teams. We have seen that against Maribor, against Ufa, against Villarreal in the second half, against Rapid Vienna here.

“We are at our best when we go after teams and teams maybe take us and the atmosphere a little bit lightly. We hope they do the same, we get up to our speed and play our best game.

“Once you come this far obviously you want to go through, it was the same right back against Shkupi on July 12, we just wanted to get through to the next round and the one after next.

“Obviously you are so close now to getting to the last 32, but this fixture we cannot take it lightly, because we could come up short against this kind of team. We want to take this into the Rapid game, not give ourselves a mountain to climb.”