THE Betfred Cup final is a game where every Rangers player has to stand up and be counted and the latest big fixture in what is a massive month for Steven Gerrard.

There are Premiership games that are hugely significant in the title race and there is the Europa League tie with Young Boys where a place in the knockout rounds is at stake.

But the one that people have been talking about for weeks is now the next one and what an occasion it will be at Hampden as the Old Firm meet in a cup final for the first time in eight years.

This run of games was always going to be difficult and unfortunately Rangers aren’t going to Hampden with two wins behind them after drawing with Aberdeen on Wednesday night.

The mistakes that Rangers made were punished and we could easily have lost the game as Aberdeen came from two goals down and had a real chance when Sam Cosgrove headed wide. They should never have been in that position, though.

Aberdeen got a lifeline through Rangers' mistakes, they reacted better than we did and losing goals at the times they did was careless. The manager won't be happy with the manner of the defending, or the way the goals affected his side.

In situations like that, you are looking for three or four of your experienced players to come to the fore because the manager and his coaching staff can only do so much on the side.

Successful Rangers teams have always had leaders on the park, people that grabbed games by the scruff of the neck and that weren't slow in telling you if you didn't pull your weight.

The players would have spent all Wednesday night and all the journey home thinking about what went wrong but they only have themselves to blame because they allowed Aberdeen back into the game through their own slackness and sloppiness.

Rangers can't be giving teams those chances and not killing games like that off. You can get away with so many errors at the back, but Rangers are being punished heavily when they make a mistake at present.

If they are to have a chance of beating Celtic on Sunday or a chance of achieving what they want to in the Europa League or the Premiership, they have to cut those errors out.

Steven will demand a reaction from his players and there is no better game for you to come back to than a cup final against Celtic and the chance to get that trophy that everyone at Ibrox covets so much.

Celtic would have got a huge boost in midweek as they won it late on against Hamilton and then saw that we had let a two-goal lead somehow slip away at Pittodrie.

But this one is all about Rangers. We haven’t won a trophy for such a long time and it is the first chance for these players to achieve what they set out to when they joined the club.

They are at Rangers to be winners. That would have been a major part of why they signed for the club and they now have a chance to become part of that history at Ibrox.

Do it for yourself, do it for your team-mates, do it for your manager and, importantly, do it for the Rangers supporters that have waited so long to see their team be successful once again.

Rangers will have to work really hard for it, there is no doubt about that, and it will take all the effort and composure that they showed in the two Old Firm wins at Ibrox last season if they are to win on Sunday.

You can’t allow Celtic to settle and play. You need to be in their faces, get in and about them, put pressure on them.

And when they are on the ball, Rangers have players that have the quality to go and hurt Celtic. This is a chance for someone in blue to become a hero.

If the players have got anything inside them, they will rise to the occasion and perform in what is a massive 90 minutes for this team and for the club.

The Aberdeen game didn’t go to plan and the Young Boys fixture is on the horizon, but you forget about what has gone and what is to come.

Days like Sunday is what it is all about and why you come to a club like Rangers. This is their chance and the players have to grab it with both hands and not have more regrets this week.