MAKE no mistake, the Scottish Premiership has a title race on its hands, and if Rangers want to stay where they currently are I the table, then the board are going to have to back Steven Gerrard in January.

It’s great that Rangers have climbed to the summit once more, but I agree with the Rangers manager that nobody should be getting too carried away at the moment around Ibrox.

Since pre-season when Gerrard came into the club, standards have risen and they have been striving to get top of the league ever since. Maybe the last time they got to the top of the league and there was a bit of good press, the players got a little complacent, and that is what will concern the Rangers boss.

A week later, they were off the top of the table and out of the Europa League with the results against Aberdeen, Dundee and Rapid Vienna, so they will have to heed the lessons of that. Football is such an unforgiving business, and there can be no room whatsoever for complacency at a club like Rangers.

Complacency is like a poison to a footballer. If a player takes his eye off the ball at all, it is one of the worst things they can possibly do, and I have always believed that.

So, I hope that the players will have learned from that and they won’t take their foot off the gas at this point. But even if they don’t, it is still a massive task to still be top of the pile come the winter break, and as Celtic have a game in hand to come, it would be a massive for Rangers if they could achieve that.

I think that if you had offered Rangers the chance before the season started to be within one game of the last 32 in the Europa League and to even be within touching distance of Celtic at the top of the league, they would have taken that.

But now that they are right in the mix at the top of the league, there is no way they can settle for that and be satisfied with their lot. They have to push on further and try to carry the fight to their rivals right to the death.

Celtic are still a strong, strong team, despite the hiccups they have had of late. The defeat to Hibernian showed that they are vulnerable when they don’t have their full squad to choose from, but their strength in depth is still far superior to Rangers’ depth at this moment in time, and they have important players coming back into the mix.

The Old Firm game is around the corner, and I wouldn’t blame people for getting carried away if Rangers win that one and go into the winter break on a real high. But Rangers have really tough games before then against Hibs twice and St Johnstone away. They have to concentrate on those before thinking about Celtic, but behind the scenes at Rangers they should already be looking ahead to January and what they need to do to sustain this charge.

Gerrard’s strike rate, and by extension Mark Allen’s, in the transfer market so far has been good on the whole. Umar Sadiq didn’t work out of course, and they have now lost Ovie Ejaria too due to personal reasons, so the priority has to be strengthening at the top end of the pitch.

For me, attacking midfield remains the priority, and I feel that they may even need two new arrivals in there of real quality.

The problem that Rangers have in that position was clear to see against Hamilton, and that is one they will continue to face. Teams had lost that fear of taking on Rangers for a while there and were coming to Ibrox and having a real go, but now that respect has returned, and we are seeing more and more teams reverting to packing their defence and often leaving just one body up the park.

That means Rangers require people that can unlock defences from the number 10 position, and I think that Gerrard will be looking at players who can take the ball on the half-turn and beat a man as well as having a defence-splitting pass in his locker.

Up front, a striker is also a must with just Alfredo Morelos and Kyle Lafferty there at the moment. Morelos of course has had his disciplinary issues, and Lafferty is just struggling a little bit for form at the moment, and there is no one else there to come in really.

Andy Dallas has been doing well in the reserves, but Gerrard has already said he is a little bit away from being ready.

I am a fan of Ryan Hardie. He’s a guy I know really well, who is doing well at Livingston again after a lengthy lay-off and he has played in the first-team before. I’m not saying he would be the answer to all the goalscoring problems, but he is something different in that he just wants to run in behind defenders.

As you saw against Hearts, when you have a player like that who can also finish, it can be devastating, so I wouldn’t rule out Gerrard recalling him to even go in as a fourth option after bringing in somebody fresh too.

All in all, it is shaping up to be a huge transfer window in January for Rangers, and hopefully the board will back the manager again and get him the players in that he is wanting. If they do, then the potential is there for a really exciting finish to the season.