The former Liverpool defender is set to make his 102nd appearance for his country and equal the all-time cap record currently held by his fellow Anfield great Sir Kenny Dalglish.

But could Penrice feature at some stage in the Group B1 encounter? Or in the meeting with World Cup quarter-finalists Switzerland in St Gallen on Monday evening? There is a every chance he will get on the park during this international window.

The left-back has been in inspired form for Rangers this season and has impressed Scotland manager Sebastien Pocognoli greatly both with his play domestically this term and his contribution in training at Lesser Hampden this week.     

If the 27-year-old does don a dark blue jersey and make his debut for the national team, it will be another major milestone in what has been a remarkable, improbable and inspiring journey.

He admitted in an interview with Sky Sports this week that he feared his professional career was over when Partick Thistle were relegated to League One following the curtailment of the 2019/20 season during the Covid-19 pandemic and was seriously considering enrolling in a college course and going part-time.

So how has the Livingston-born player, who has been the pick of the Ibrox club’s summer signings and their most impactful player in the 2026/27 campaign, finally begun to fulfil the enormous potential he displayed when he broke through at Partick Thistle as a teenager 10 years ago?

The heights the skinny lad from Knightsridge could reach in the game were glaringly obvious to those who worked with him and watched him play at that time.

Barry Smith, the former Celtic and Dundee defender who took Penrice to part-time East Fife on loan shortly after he was appointed manager at New Bayview in December 2016, was certainly impressed despite the shock he received when he first laid eyes on his new recruit.

“He looked as if he'd come straight from school,” said Smith. “He was quite quiet and very polite. East Fife was definitely a learning curve for him. But he was a good kid. We signed him on loan until the end of the season and I think he played in every game.

Scott McTominay, left, and James Penrice during a training session at Lesser Hampden this week (Image: Andrew Milligan)

“He only trained once a week with us, on a Thursday night, but he came through to every training session. If he wasn't playing with the Thistle youth team on a Tuesday evening, he would come as well. So he had the attitude he needed at that stage to go and progress in the game.

“But it was easy to see he had talent as well. He was fit, he got up and down the park, he had a good left foot and a great delivery into the box. But it was his attitude that really struck me. He just wanted to win.

“He was a bit raw. He was eager to get on the ball at all times, but he was a young kid and was maybe taking it in the wrong areas. We gave him the information he needed, he was willing to take it on board and he learned from it."

Scott Robinson played alongside Penrice that season as East Fife just missed out on a Championship play-off spot and was then reunited with him at Livingston that summer. He is not at all surprised that his old team-mate is playing for Rangers and on the verge of making his bow for Scotland.  

“I knew straight away how far he could go,” he said. “I thought, ‘This kid's going to be a player!’ Honestly, he had all the attributes that you need to make it. He was also as fit as a fiddle and was there week in, week out.

“Normally, you expect a young 17-year-old kid to have issues getting stuck in. But right from the get-go, even though he was really skinny, he would do that. He would never shy away from a challenge. He was willing to do the defensive side of the game.

“But he had quality as well. You could see glimpses of that in games when he was going forward. He could get up and down the park all game too. No, I was really impressed with him at a young age.

“I liked his character as well. You would expect a young kid coming in to a strange dressing room to be a wee bit timid, to maybe not say that much. But he fitted in brilliantly. He was actually a good member of that squad. He wasn't a shy boy at all. I love young players who come in and show a bit of character and he did. That really helped him."

Penrice needed to show fortitude when he moved to Livingston on loan and started working under Davie Martindale. But Robinson saw first-hand how he dealt with whatever the notoriously difficult taskmaster threw at him despite his tender years. 

“East Fife played Livingston twice in the space of three weeks at the start of 2017,” he said. “We beat them at New Bayview in League One and then at Almondvale in the Scottish Cup. He was brilliant in both games, he really stood out. I think that is when Davie first noticed him. He ended up taking him on loan the following season.

“When you go to Livingston you mature. Because of the way Davie works, you are expected to perform at a high level on and off the ball. If you're not doing that, you'll not play. You have to do the dirty stuff, make it difficult for the opponent, give them the hardest afternoon they can possibly have. We were brilliant at that.

“Penners was never one to shy away from that. He has always been a grafter. He bought right into it. He was fit, he was powerful, he got in opposition players’ faces, he loved a tackle. He had that needle, that aggression, in his game. I think he really got to know the game at Livingston.

Rangers captain James Tavernier is tackled by James Penrice of Livingston (Image: Stuart Wallace / Shutterstock)

“Davie can be difficult to work under at times. I had a couple of run-ins with him when I played under him. But he is a brilliant motivator. Come three o'clock on Saturday everybody is always working hard for him and pulling in the same direction.

“Davie loves hard workers and he loved Penners. He played him in a lot of games. That is probably where he learned the game, the man’s game. In training and in matches he was always there.”

So why does Robinson feel that it took Penrice so many years to reach the very highest level of the game after that season? The Bonnyrigg Rose player wonders if a greater appreciation of the demands of being a professional athlete has made a difference to his old team-mate in recent years.  

“I don't know," he said. "Maybe he was in with the wrong crowd when he was young. Maybe he liked to go out with his mates to house parties or whatever and enjoy himself. Maybe he got to that stage where he thought, ‘Right, I really need to knuckle down here or I'm just going to stay at this level the rest of my career.’

“He's definitely chosen the right path if that is the case. You have to do that if you want to make it. I had to do it myself. You need to stay in at weekends when your pals are all going out on the town.

“But I am sure that going to Greece and playing for AEK Athens last season was huge for him as well. Foreign coaches have different ideas about the game and I have no doubt that it will have been an eye-opener for Penners.

“I worked under Paulo Sergio when I was at Hearts and it helped me massively. He came from Sporting Lisbon in Portugal and was just brilliant. Training under him was completely different to anything I had experienced before, but everybody knew their job and knew their team-mates’ jobs.

“He brought staff over with him who were big on diet and helped the players with that. They had us working on our core strength after every training session. I am sure Penners will have got an insight into that in Greece and that it will have helped him to take his game to another level.”

Penrice returned to Thistle after his loan spell with Livingston and established himself as a first-team regular at Firhill. He subsequently played under Ian McCall for nearly two seasons before leaving in the summer of 2021. His old manager admitted that he is surprised but delighted that he has pushed on since.

“He was very young when I had him,” he said. “I have to be honest, I didn't see him being the first choice left-back for Rangers and on the verge of playing for Scotland. But all the ingredients were certainly there for him to enjoy a successful career, no doubt about it.

Ian McCall during his time as Partick Thistle manager in 2023 (Image: Bruce White/Colorsport / Shutterstock)

“I think even he would agree that he needed to work on the defensive side of the game. But he had all the tools he needed. He was a great boy, really motivated. He had a wonderful natural enthusiasm which I think is going out of the game.

“The only other time that I had a player with his sort of natural enthusiasm in my managerial career was Owen Coyle at Falkirk. It is a fabulous thing. It lifts the stands, it lifts the punters.”

Penrice needed to have his own spirits lifted when the 2019/20 season was ended early by the SPFL due to the coronavirus outbreak and Thistle were relegated to the third tier amid an outcry among their supporters and the wider football public.   

“James comes from a very tight-knit family but I think he found that period very hard,” said McCall. “But his best game for me was the League One title-winning game against Falkirk in 2021. He played wide right in the front three and we won 5-0. He was absolutely magnificent.

“If you saw him celebrating the title win that night you would never have thought that he had struggled that season! Seriously, though, he did find the whole thing very hard. But he moved on to Livingston after that and really, really kicked on. He got his move to Hearts, picked up a couple of Player of the Year awards, went to AEK in Greece and then returned to Scotland with Rangers.

“Some players are just slow burners. His Rangers team-mate Lawrence Shankland, who I had at Ayr United, was exactly the same. I also had Michael Rose at Ayr and he went on to have a really great career with Coventry City and Stoke City down in England. Sometimes it just happens like that.”

Martindale urged Rangers to sign Penrice for nothing when the full-back was nearing the end of his contract at Livingston three years ago and was available for free. They ignored his advice. He is pleased that his old charge, who joined the Ibrox club on loan from AEK Athens with an option to buy in August, is turning out for his childhood idols now and is doing well.

“I saw how far he could go a while back to be honest,” he said. “Robbie Neilson phoned me one day when he was the Hearts manager and said, ‘Look, I’m really, really interested in James.’ I was at a Rangers game shortly after that and I was speaking to a couple of their directors. I said, ‘You should try to get him.’

“I know James’s family really well. I knew he grew up a Rangers supporter and knew how much the club meant to him. So I tried to get them to take him on a pre-contract. He wouldn’t have cost them anything.

Livingston manager David Martindale (Image: Stuart Wallace / Shutterstock)

“I looked at the players who Rangers were signing at that time. They had signed Ridvan Yilmaz for a few million pounds and they had Borna Barisic. I saw James playing in the Premiership and thought he would do well for them. I knew what his attributes were. He would have been a perfect fit and would have been free at that point.   

“But they didn’t do anything. He signed a pre-contract with Hearts, played for them for a season, did superbly well, went over to AEK Athens in Greece and then signed for Rangers. He got there in the end I suppose. I am not surprised that he is at Rangers, is doing well for them and has now got called up by Scotland too.”

Martindale added, “I signed him when he was in League One with Thistle. I knew what he had in his locker. He was an attacking player. I tried him in a few positions – left wing, right wing, No.8 and left-back. But having him at left-back suited him and suited how I wanted the team to play.

“He improved massively in the three years he had at Livingston. It was probably the turning point in his career. He improved his all-round game. He improved the timing of his runs, his overlaps, his underlaps. He really tightened up on his nutrition. He got himself a lot leaner, stripped his body fat and built up more muscle. He was in peak fitness.

“He came from League One and we were in the Premiership. I took a wee bit of a gamble on him, but it was an educated gamble because I knew the potential he had. As I say, I know his family and knew he came from a good background as well. James is a good person, a good human being.

“He got good coaching, had demands put on him, played with better players and against better players at Livingston. I was quite hard on him to start with, but I kept pushing him because I knew the ability and mentality were there and he developed. We gave him a platform to play every week.”

Smith, Robinson, McCall and Martindale all expect Penrice to cope if Pocognoli – who used two wing-backs during his first four games as Scotland manager – plays him against North Macedonia and Switzerland and feel he could contribute greatly to his country’s cause going forward due to his energy, quality and versatility.

“Every player's journey is different,” said Smith. “Some take a wee bit longer to develop. But if you have a will to succeed and are able to take the good with the bad then you will get there and you will be very successful.

“James’s attitude was brilliant at East Fife. He just got on with it. He did everything that was asked of him. He has settled in very quickly at Rangers and become a mainstay of the team. He seems to be able to handle that sort of pressure.

“It says a lot about James that Derek [McInnes] felt he could trust him to play in central midfield against Celtic this season. That is the biggest thing a player wants, the trust of their manager. Being moved in that game showed how much he was respected and trusted. He will thrive on that.”

Robinson said, “He'll just take it in his stride. I see similarities between Penners' journey and the journey Andy Robertson has been on. Robertson got released by Celtic as a kid and went to Queen’s Park, but he just kept on going and improving. He used to bomb up and down the pitch all game. He has incredible energy. Penners is exactly the same.”

Nicolas Kuhn of Celtic is tackled by James Penrice of Hearts at Parkhead last year (Image: Andy Buchanan / Shutterstock)

“I think the way the new Scotland head coach wants to play will suit James perfectly,” said McCall.

Martindale said, “I think he will take to it like a duck to water. It won’t faze him. He can play as a left wing-back or a left-back. He will be playing with very good players with Scotland and that will help him too.

“It is very satisfying to see Liam Kelly and James Penrice, two players who played in the same Livingston team, in the Scotland squad together. We gave them the platform to play in the Premiership, but they both took the opportunity and really progressed their games."