Walter Smith insists his Rangers players have come a long way from being the "no-hopers" they were when Celtic cruised to the 2007 title.Smith's side could be crowned Scottish Premier League champions on Thursday evening.

Monday night's win over St Mirren means the Old Firm rivals head into the final night of the season level on points at the summit, with defending champions Celtic four goals better off.

Both face daunting away games. Rangers travel to Aberdeen, while Dundee United are at home to Celtic at Tannadice, and Smith admits anything could happen on the night now.

But he insisted: "It's far better than last year. We were no-hopers at this stage of the season."

By the time Smith took charge at Ibrox in January 2007, Rangers were well out of title contention and could only play to salvage pride and make sure of second place, but this season has been a different story.

"Now we go into a game knowing that, if we win it, then the pressure is on Celtic to win their game," Smith said.

"Equally, Gordon Strachan will be saying the same thing about us."

Kris Boyd's early opener and a double from Jean-Claude Darcheville against St Mirren dented, rather than decimated, Celtic's superior goal difference.

But Smith insists Aberdeen and United should both be given credit for potentially having the final say in the destination of the silverware rather than assuming the Old Firm will both claim the necessary points.

"It's disrespectful to the teams that we are going to play," he said.

"Both Dundee United and Aberdeen are opposition that are very difficult to play against.

"We saw against Motherwell at the weekend that none of the teams are going to allow Rangers and Celtic to just turn up and win the games.

"We know that isn't going to be the case. We will have to see how the circumstances turn out on Thursday evening.

"We go into a situation where each of the teams has to win the games but we don't know what the scores are going to be. It will be a test for everyone on Thursday night."

The trip to Pittodrie will be Rangers' 67th game of their season, which will come to an end when Smith's side face Queen of the South in the Scottish Cup final on Saturday.

Much has been made of the fixture schedule and the Scottish Premier League's refusal to extend the season further to ease the strain on the Ibrox club.

But Smith concedes that a European hangover, rather than the sheer number of games, has been Rangers' biggest problem recently.

They dropped points to Celtic and Hibernian respectively after UEFA Cup semi-final games against Fiorentina, before drawing with Motherwell on Saturday in the wake of their defeat to Zenit St Petersburg in the final three days earlier.

Smith said: "All the talk was about the fixture pile-up. I think any club in our position would try to do the best for themselves.

"It wasn't because we didn't want to play the fixtures - it's just that we wanted them spaced as evenly as we thought would be a benefit to us and every club would be the same. That's all we tried to do.

"Once the decision was made about what we had to do, we have got on and we have played the games.

"The situation with the SPL thing hasn't been the major factor for us, it has been the fact that we have maybe struggled to handle the games after the bigger European games at the end of the season.

"Those have been ones where we have dropped points. That has been contributory rather than the number of games we have had to play."

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