The Light Blues are preparing to fly to Germany ahead of Thursday's UEFA Cup last-16 clash with Werder Bremen, when they will start with a 2-0 lead from the first leg as a quarter-final place beckons.

They will return and on Friday go straight into the preparation stage for Sunday's CIS Insurance Cup final against Dundee United at Hampden.

Next Wednesday they take on Partick for a place in the Scottish Cup semi-finals.

And the hectic run of fixtures will only briefly relent when Scotland meet Croatia at the national stadium on March 26, but there will almost certainly be Rangers players on duty in that game too.

There are three Old Firm clashes in the league to fit in before the end of the season, but McCoist would far rather be involved on all four fronts than relying on one or two competitions to bring Rangers success.

"Brilliant isn't it!" he said.

"A lot of people say, 'are the amount of games worrying you ... the pitches, the backlog, the tired players?'.

"No, this is where you want to be, this is what you want to do.

"You only play these amount of games if you're doing reasonably well in all competitions.

"But it's now getting to the business end of the season and we want to start winning things.

"The boys have performed very, very well to get to this stage but as yet we haven't won a thing yet. So it's a very important, testing time coming up.

"But this is where you want to be. These are the games you want to play in - away to Bremen, a cup final on Sunday, three Celtic games, this is what it's all about."

Rangers, who also lead the Clydesdale Bank Premier League, will start as firm favourites in the League Cup showpiece against United at the weekend.

But Europe could be the toughest test for Walter Smith's side, and McCoist warned the two-goal lead from last Thursday's Ibrox clash with Bremen could be whittled away.

He is eager to summon up a performance as gritty as Rangers put in against Red Star Belgrade back in August, when a goalless draw in Serbia after a 1-0 win at Ibrox secured a lucrative place in the Champions League group stages.

That result was worth millions of pounds in revenue to Rangers and paved the way for memorable home-and-away tussles with Barcelona, Lyon and Stuttgart.

A similar outcome tomorrow would nudge Rangers closer to their second European trophy, 36 years since their European Cup Winners' Cup triumph in Barcelona.

McCoist saw Bremen lose heavily at the weekend, to Stuttgart, but was not swayed from his belief that the Bundesliga's second-placed side are a top-quality outfit.

McCoist said: "A lot of the public maybe think the tie is effectively over because it's a great result at home against Werder Bremen.

"But believe me, I watched Werder Bremen at the weekend against Stuttgart - they beat them 6-3 and - I'm deadly serious - it could have been 8-6 or 8-7.

"That was the way the two teams played the game. On the one hand, it's nice to know they can concede goals and we have players who can score goals against them.

"But on the other hand they'll throw everything at us.

"They've got a big side, they've got a strong side. I said before the first game they remind me a bit of a British side.

"They're big and strong and they get the ball forward quickly.

"They have the little lad (Diego) in the middle of the park who's a tremendous playmaker, at the same time they've got Naldo and (Per) Mertesacker, and (Hugo) Almeida up front.

"They're big, big lads, and the two boys at the back (Naldo and Mertesacker) will come up for throw-ins, set-pieces and corner kicks.

"So we know they're going to put us under some amount of pressure, but we've just got to stand up.

"We had a game earlier on in the qualifying stages of the Champions League against Red Star Belgrade which was maybe a little bit the same.

"We won the first game 1-0 and we had to go over to Belgrade and defend.

"So a performance like that, equal to that, will definitely be required."