'There's everything to play for': Jack Butland says Rangers fans need to see progress

Jack Butland insists Rangers have everything to play for in the remainder of the season as they look to improve despite their domestic trophy hopes seemingly disappearing with their Scottish Cup exit last week.

Defeat to Queen’s Park ruled out silverware from a knock-out competition in Scotland this season, while the team trails Celtic by 13 points in the Premiership title race with 12 games to play.

The Ibrox club do have a Europa League knock-out tie to look forward to next month but regardless of the disappointments in domestic competitions, the goalkeeper says the team needs to be delivering victories for supporters and showing signs of progress.

“There’s everything, always everything to play for,” Butland said after his side’s 3-1 victory over Hearts at Tynecastle on Sunday.

“No friendlies here, there’s no free hits, there’s no games that you can toss aside as if it doesn’t matter, there isn’t that.

“Because no matter the game, if you don’t get the right result, the reactions are the same.

“That’s what this group is going to have to expect and as a result of that, the focus is to win every game.

“It’s what the standard is and it’s what the fans need now, it’s what the club needs, some real positivity, some performances that they can see progress in.

“But ultimately they need to see results and that’s what we need to focus on, one game at a time between now and the end of the season.”

Butland was left out of the team that suffered cup humiliation against Queen’s Park last week but returned to the starting line-up to put in a stand-out performance against Hearts, making a series of important saves.

The Englishman looked back on a tough week on the training ground as players and staff reflected on the huge blow of a cup exit to lower-league opposition and revealed that there had been some “harsh words” as the defeat was picked over.

“It is the same as every week,” he said. “You need to enjoy things when they’re good. You need to feel it when it’s not.

“You need to understand what that is. Boys need to feel it. So there’s a few harsh words here and there and people need to hear things.

“And that’s important, you need to have that in a group. So it was a difficult week, there was no day where you’re not reminded of the week before.

“Whether it be friends, family, fans you meet in public, around the training ground, it doesn’t get away from you.

“So the biggest thing for the group is trying to pick people up, trying to remind people of the good things that people have been doing, the good things that they’re capable of doing.

“But that’s not easy after a game like that. So the messages in the recent days were about Hearts, have been about the fact that they might have smelled blood and thought ‘we can do one here’ and that can’t be the case.

“So that was the message before the game, that there’s no way that they can feel because of last week that they can turn us over and we went there and got the result.”