Rangers have won back-to-back Old Firm derbies, and in the process they have started to look like a Derek McInnes team. A 1-0 league win at Celtic Park followed last Sunday’s 3-0 victory over Celtic at Ibrox in the League Cup, delivering a sixth successive win and cutting the gap to Celtic to two points.
“I like putting my name to this team at the minute,” McInnes said after the second derby victory in a week.
It is a striking reversal from the opening weeks of the campaign, when a sluggish start brought humiliating exits from the Europa League and the Conference League and left Rangers trailing the pace set by Celtic. McInnes has said he remains “embarrassed” by the European defeats to Jagiellonia Bialystok and Jablonec, and admitted the criticism that followed was hard to respond to. Former Rangers midfielder Andy Halliday, speaking on BBC Scotland’s Sportsound, described how completely the picture has changed. “Take it back a month when Derek McInnes was under real pressure,” he said. “A big thing that was quite confusing to people is: ‘it doesn’t look like a Derek McInnes team’. They don’t look organised off the ball, they don’t look aggressive, they don’t look athletic. How that narrative has completely changed over the last three, four weeks. That for me is a Derek McInnes team, what we watched today.” Halliday pointed to a side on the front foot, aggressive, making contact, playing and running forward, and putting Celtic under pressure for large parts of the game.
The platform has been defensive. Rangers have conceded only once in their last six matches, having kept just one clean sheet in their first seven this season. Dujon Sterling has settled in his best position at right-back alongside centre-backs Emmanuel Fernandez and Olwethu Makhanya, a physically imposing unit that allows James Penrice to push forward from left-back and add numbers to the midfield. Fernandez made 11 clearances once he had settled, although he was lucky not to be sent off at Celtic Park after an early booking for hauling down Camilo Duran was followed by a challenge on Benjamin Nygren that went unpunished. Makhanya brought calm authority alongside him and was named man of the match, while Celtic were restricted to a single shot on target at home. McInnes’s ability to organise a team off the ball is long established over more than 800 games as a manager: his Hearts side, which went so close to winning the league last season, conceded the fewest goals of any team in the Premiership.
In front of the defence, Dan Neil and Nico Raskin have stepped up, making the most passes in Rangers’ ranks. Overall Rangers made 75 fewer passes than Celtic, but 50 more of them came in the opposition half, with Celtic’s passing often taking place between their centre-backs while Neil and Raskin found each other and players in more advanced areas. “My midfield were terrific again,” McInnes said. “Celtic filled the midfield. We filled it with even more bodies, we just made sure we weren’t going to get overrun in there. We look far more calm, far more settled in everything that we’re doing. The players deserve so much credit for that.”
Up front, Naderi has given Rangers the focal point they needed. Concern grew when captain Lawrence Shankland pulled a hamstring against Motherwell just as he had started scoring regularly, but the 23-year-old German — who did not wholly convince last season after a January move from German third-tier club Hansa Rostock — now has four goals in 13 games, more than he managed in the second half of last season. His winner at Celtic Park came from lurking to pounce on a shot that was parried out to him, finishing smartly with his knee over the ball. He was involved in 34 duels, 18 of them in the air, winning 11, and had the most shots and touches of anyone in the Celtic box. “His all round play was really, really good,” former Rangers striker Kris Boyd said on Sky Sports. “Him and [Kevin] Kelsy didn’t have much link up play but they were working together. If one went short, one went long. Naderi’s running power was really key for Rangers. When he came in at first there was a rawness about him. But there is a lot to like.” Kelsy, a £9m signing, is the alternative option in attack.
The question now is whether Rangers can sustain the improvement. McInnes knows that, given the record investment in this squad, these performances and results will be expected every week, especially without the burden of European football — though at an average age of 24 Rangers have one of the youngest groups in the league, and losing their experienced captain only adds to the sense of rawness. Former Rangers winger Peter Lovenkrands told BBC Radio Scotland the team will take “so much confidence” from beating their rivals twice in a row, and McInnes agrees it has to be the starting point. The win also makes him the first Rangers manager since Graeme Souness to win his first two derbies. “There’s a lot of growth in the team,” he said. “And winning in places like this only helps. But there’s plenty of league games to be won and we have to concentrate on that. It was hard to defend the criticism [at the start of the season]. We’re on a strong run now, six wins in a row, which is the kind of consistency we’re searching for. But at the start we didn’t look ready, for whatever reason, we didn’t look settled as a team, didn’t carry an attacking threat. But we’ve knuckled down and worked hard, and hopefully that winning habit is something we can keep working towards.”