All managers will say every fixture has the same importance but the Dutchman's team selection in Italy spoke to where his priorities lie. Aberdeen, quite simply, is a higher-pressure game right now.

Another stumble, after the drab draw with Livingston and turgid League Cup win over Dundee, could have big ramifications for everyone and everything at the club... players, management, and the board with the agm coming up.

What is Van Bronckhorst's plan?

The big problem I have with Rangers right now is that I just don't know what they are trying to do. What is Van Bronckhorst's plan?

They need to find a defined way of playing. Under Steven Gerrard, it was always a 4-3-3. The players knew what they were doing and were putting it into practice pretty well, as performances and results showed.

Initially, Van Bronckhorst stuck broadly with that system and it took Rangers to the Europa League final and a Scottish Cup success last season. But he's tried to change it, and it's not clicked. The players don't look comfortable or able to do what he wants them to do.

If a manager comes in and wants to play a certain way, he needs certain types of player. And if he doesn't have those, he should be able to find a formula that gets the best out of the squad he does have.

Good players can adapt but there is so much chopping and changing just now that they are finding it tough to do that. Van Bronckhorst made six changes for Livingston, five for Dundee , another handful for Napoli... I don't think he knows what his best team is.

I was baffled by the side he picked in Naples. He played Scott Wright in a Champions League game against one of Europe's form sides, but doesn't use him domestically. Why? That sets off alarm bells for me.

'Van Bronckhorst needs to talk the talk'

That is not the only thing that worries me.

For all the noise, Rangers are only four points behind Celtic with three Old Firm games to come. The title race is still wide open.

But when he was asked about his side's chances after the Livingston draw, there was a lot of negativity from him. Players don't want to hear that. They want their manager saying 'yeah, we're in this fight until the end'.

Even if he doesn't think that, he has to say it on the training ground, in the dressing room and in the media. He needs to get a bounce because you can see players' heads are down and their shoulders are slumped. It's just negativity all round.

There is a lot of pressure on everybody at Rangers, but there's a massive amount on the manager right now.

Would defeat on Saturday be the end for him? It's hard to know what the board are thinking, but it's coming up for a year since he took charge and I always thought if we were trailing Celtic by the World Cup by eight or 10 points, his job would have been on the line.

Plenty of good men in that position have lost their job because of results. Fans demand that and you cannot kid them. They've seen all the good stuff at this club as well as all the bad. They know what they're watching and they know, right now, it's not good enough.

Mark Hateley was speaking to BBC Sport Scotland's Richard Winton