Steven Gerrard says he fully understands the excitement levels which drove Rangers fans to break lockdown rules and launch an pre-emptive title party on Ibrox’s doorstep.

Thousands of supporters carrying flags and smoke bombs breached the Scottish Government’s stay-at-home rules to welcome Gerrard and his team into the stadium ahead of their clash with St Mirren.

A 3-0 win over the Buddies leaves Gers on the verge of being crowned champions for the first time in a decade.

But the Irishman – whose team now need to beat Hamilton in a fortnight to seal their top-six place – said: “It didn’t have any impact. We walked through them and they shouldn’t be there but can you blame them?

“It was good humour, no malice. I walked through 100 of them and it was all good humour. They generated a good atmosphere and the Rangers players didn’t let them down today.

“We’re not going to beat ourselves up about today’s game, if you’d offered me one game to go pre-split to get into the top six with all we’ve had to deal with Covid, we’d have bitten your hand off.

“We have one massive game to come in a couple of weeks. The players are really excited and we’ll be raring to go.”