As every budding football coach will tell you, winning matches is all about getting the small details right.

Things like not lapsing into a trance when a long ball is knocked towards you down the channel. Not being completely unaware that there’s an opponent breathing down your neck when you take a square ball on the edge of your own box.

Goodness me. At times, all that was missing from Rangers’ slapstick defending routine at Dens Park was a treacherous banana skin and someone throwing a bucket of water over themselves.

All good things come to an end. The seven-game winning run which Derek McInnes’ side had put together between beating Aberdeen away on August 30 and Kilmarnock at home a week back was never going to go on forever.

But what a poor way to drop the ball. Rangers were not outdone by a moment of magic or simply being outplayed by a team hitting their straps. They slipped up by pointing the blunderbuss straight at their foot and pulling the trigger.

Last Friday, there was talk from Manny Fernandez of the team claiming the highest number of clean sheets in the league.

It was hardly a fanciful notion, either. The consolation goal which Rangers conceded to Killie the previous weekend was the first one they’d let in after four matches in which Ivor Pandur’s goal hadn’t been breached.

Derek McInnes’ side had lost three goals in their first two league matches, but just one in their next five — or six including the League Cup rout over Celtic.

A more settled back four who’d steadily got to know how each other operated seemed to be on the same page as the deep-lying midfielders. After a difficult start, it looked like Rangers had the fundamentals out of possession right. All of that went out of the window on Tayside.

Dujon Sterling has been praised to the hilt of late and rightly so. The day before, his manager said he’d back him against anyone in a one v one.

What the full-back was thinking of when Dundee sent a long ball into his area shortly before half-time, only he could say.

Slow to react as Ashley Hay gathered, Sterling’s belated action was to meekly knock the ball into the path of Bradley Fink. The Swiss made short work of rounding the keeper and deservedly edging Dundee ahead.

The visiting fans hadn’t seen the last of the comedic defending, though. After Rangers had turned the game on its head thanks to spectacular goals from Badredine Bouanani and Nico Raskin either side of the interval, Dan Neil had an aberration of his own.

Demanding the ball from Raskin without first checking if it was on was his first mistake. His second was failing to simply pass the ball back to his keeper once Callum Jones came into the picture.

Ransacked on the edge of his own penalty area, the midfielder — who’s also been terrific of late — could only watch on in horror as Jones scored his first goal in Dark Blue to claim a point for Steven Pressley’s side.

But here’s the thing. While sleep won’t have come easy for Sterling or Neil after their high-profile blunders, it would be wrong to lump the entire blame for the loss of two points at their doors.

These days, the dogs in the street know what Dundee are about. Bravely setting up with two strikers and two wingers, they take the game to you. They mix it up and they look to ask questions. They aren’t a surprise package. Yet their approach seemed to spook McInnes’ side for long enough.

Dundee were much the better team in the period leading up to Fink’s opener. Hay thumped the bar with a header. They fashioned a number of half-chances and looked far more assured of themselves than the visitors.

Rangers struggled to exert any semblance of control on the game. They were lax at the back, second best in midfield. There was too big a gap between Kim Min-su and Ryan Naderi up top. It briefly felt like things had reverted to the early weeks of the campaign.

Sterling was the fall guy, for sure, but the collective display was miles off it.

The one shining light for McInnes was the display of Bouanani, a surprise starter who displaced Kevin Kelsy. On loan from Stuttgart, the winger had made just one start in his four appearances to date.

Lively and imaginative, he fully justified his selection. His goal to equalise was a peach. Having seen his initial shot blocked by Imari Samuels, he found the top corner with the rebound. Simply unstoppable.

Bluntly, Rangers were fortunate to go in level at the break. There was a marked improvement when they re-emerged. That is, until Neil’s error floored them.

Where was that sense of urgency in the opening 45 minutes? McInnes’ men took fewer touches, made better runs and demanded more of each other.

With the midfield connected to Kim and Ryan Naderi, Dundee were penned in for a spell.

Raskin’s goal was a thing of beauty. Kim found Neil who fed the Belgian. His strike from 25 yards dipped and crashed in off the underside of the bar.

It should then only have been a case of how many goals Rangers would win by. Neil’s costly error came with 21 minutes remaining, plenty time to repair the damage.

It just all became a little bit panicked and messy. One goalmouth scramble aside, Rangers really didn’t look like scoring.

They played some good stuff from a goal down, but the purple patch didn’t last long enough to put the game to bed. The conspicuous individual errors were only part of a collective display which wasn’t good enough for long enough.

At what point is it safe to say that Pressley was an inspired appointment by Dundee?

If the figure in the home dug-out at Dens Park hasn’t won over the doubters by now, then he never will.

An eighth-place finish last season was commendable and came on the back of Pressley himself acknowledging that he faced a major battle to win hearts and minds.

Not only are Dundee presently sitting proudly in fourth place, their results to this point have been achieved despite a brutal injury list which counts Simon Murray and Fin Robertson among the long-term casualties.

Pressley is evidently not only a fine man-manager and a shrewd tactician. He’s a problem solver.

While a first win over the Ibrox men since November 2017 was beyond his depleted side, a deserved share of the spoils against an in-form opponent will add to the growing sense of momentum.

With St Mirren, Kilmarnock and St Johnstone coming up, Dundee have an opportunity to ballast their lofty position.

Wild horses aren’t going to drag their manager down the road of speaking about a top-six finish, let alone a return to Europe for the first time since 2003-04. But the fact that supporters are even contemplating such achievements is a measure of the job he’s done.