John Souttar admits his return to the Rangers starting XI was a "difficult" one against Celtic.
The former Hearts centre-back was drafted into Michael Beale's defence last week in the Old Firm derby.
The Scotland international played alongside Ben Davies at the heart of the Light Blues' defence, with Connor Goldson dropping out through injury.
He made a catastrophic error for Celtic's third goal in the 3-2 win for Ange Postecoglou's men, with his loose backpass to Allan McGregor latched upon by Jota.
However, after such a lengthy spell out of the team through injury, it's fair to say he was thrown in at the deep end last week.
Souttar reflected: "It’s been a tough start to my Rangers career. It wasn't how I envisioned it when I signed, it's just one of these things but I'm back now, I'm feeling good and I'm glad to be getting minutes on the park.
"Was the Celtic game bittersweet? Yeah, of course. I only knew the day before I was playing with Connor's injury. It was my first start since the first game of the season. It was a difficult game to come back into, but just to play football again, I was buzzing to be back on the pitch."
The 26-year-old added: "I think just focus. You need to be mentally strong. You have to have an end goal, focus on coming back, focus on being the best you can, and focus on playing for Rangers, which is what I signed to do.
"I never actually felt like I'd done it before, so that was always the goal for me to come back and be as good a player as I possibly can for the club.
"I feel really good to be fair. I've been training for over a month, maybe two months now. Usually with my other injuries, I was straight back into the Hearts team, but obviously, here it's a bit different.
"There's people in front of me that were doing well. It gave me that opportunity to build up properly and take a month or two months to come back. I’m feeling the benefits now because I feel really good physically."
