Rangers' Late Win Keeps Title Race Alive Against St Mirren
Four minutes. That was the thin strip of time between mutiny and mayhem at Ibrox.
As the board went up for stoppage time, Rangers were stumbling towards a goalless draw with St Mirren, the soundtrack a chorus of boos and the sight of blue seats rapidly reappearing. Hundreds of home supporters had already decided they had seen enough of a ragged second half.
Then Bojan Miovski changed the mood of a stadium – and possibly the shape of Rangers’ season.
The substitute, demoted to fifth-choice striker not long ago and seemingly heading for the exit door, found the composure that had deserted everyone around him. A neat, clinical finish, and suddenly the anger in the stands flipped into the kind of wild celebrations usually reserved for silverware.
It looked excessive for a 1-0 home win in early season. It wasn’t. Not when you consider what was at stake.
A goal that kept the title race alive
Celtic’s 1-0 win at St Johnstone meant Rangers were staring at the prospect of slipping seven points behind their rivals after just six league games. Miovski’s late intervention kept the gap at four and, crucially, kept belief intact heading into a defining fortnight.
Derek McInnes’ side now face Celtic twice in eight days – first in Sunday’s Premier Sports Cup quarter-final at Ibrox, then at Celtic Park in the Premiership. Arriving at those fixtures on the back of a damaging home draw and a toxic atmosphere would have drained the air from their sails.
Instead, Rangers can lean on a more palatable narrative: five home games unbeaten, four straight wins since the loss to Hibernian that had cranked up the pressure on McInnes in the wake of their European exit.
“If you strip it back, six wins out of seven, four straight wins,” the manager noted, with justification. “We have not lost a goal apart from an own goal.”
Strip it back further and another truth appears. Since thrashing holders St Mirren 5-1 in the League Cup at Ibrox a month ago, Rangers’ four subsequent victories have all been by a single goal. The margins are thin. The work, as McInnes freely admits, is far from finished.
From battering to bewildered
For an hour, this never looked like a contest that would be settled by panic and relief.
“I thought the performance for the first hour was really strong, particularly the first half, where we absolutely battered St Mirren,” McInnes told BBC Scotland.
He was right. Rangers pressed high, snapped into tackles, and flooded forward. The aggression and intensity off the ball that had been missing earlier in the season was there, and with it came chance after chance.
Former Rangers midfielder Andy Halliday, watching on for BBC Radio Scotland’s Sportsound, saw a team transformed in that opening spell.
“I thought in the first half Rangers were really good,” he said. “They have shown a vast improvement off the ball over the last three or four games. They played with a lot of aggression, a lot of intensity and they've created an abundance of chances in the first half as well, but they just don't seem to have that ruthlessness in the top end of the pitch.”
That lack of edge left the door open. St Mirren walked through it after the break.
“They played with a bit more belief and came after us and we were guilty of so many poor decisions,” McInnes admitted.
Halliday went further. “I don't particularly agree with Derek McInnes' assessment of the second half. I thought St Mirren had much more than a 20-minute period. Rangers just lost all control and got a bit desperate. They got a wee bit too forceful too early, but take nothing away from them – the forcefulness worked in the end with the direct ball getting them the goal.”
The pressure finally told, but not before Rangers had looked rattled, hurried and increasingly short of ideas.
Injuries, improvisation and an unlikely saviour
McInnes’ attacking options have been shredded. Long-term injuries to Youssef Chermiti and summer signing Lawrence Shankland have stripped away his first-choice strike pairing. The news that Japanese winger Daisuke Yokota now requires groin surgery, only weeks after arriving, deepens the frustration.
No wonder the manager has leaned on Ryan Naderi and big-money arrival Kevin Kelsy from Portland Timbers. Miovski, by contrast, had slipped so far down the pecking order that a late-window departure looked probable.
“It just shows you what football is like and how quickly it can change,” Halliday said. “It looked like he was out of the picture two or three weeks ago and it looked like he was going to be on his way in the transfer window, but he's come up with a massive goal.”
McInnes knows the numbers back Miovski’s case.
“It is just typical of football that a few weeks ago Bojan would have seemed so far out of it,” he said. “But, when you actually strip it back, his goals per minutes in the Premiership is up there with Lawrence Shankland.
“So I was delighted when I inherited someone like Bojan who knows his way about the Scottish Premiership and is a goalscorer and, played in the right manner and with the right partner, is capable of scoring goals.”
Halliday does not expect Miovski to start against Celtic, but accepts the landscape has shifted.
“He's certainly more in the picture after a goal like that,” he suggested.
Celebrations, scrutiny and what comes next
The images at full-time – players sprinting to the corner, staff punching the air, supporters roaring themselves hoarse – drew raised eyebrows outside Ibrox. McInnes had no time for that criticism.
“Last-minute winners are great for players, coaches and fans,” he said. “We'd rather not be in that position, but credit to the players for keeping going.
“There are obviously loads we have to improve on, but we have to meanwhile keep winning and we have to keep improving if we are to achieve anything this season.”
That is the tightrope Rangers now walk. The form line reads well: six wins from seven, four clean sheets in a row aside from an own goal, momentum at home restored. The performances tell a more complicated story of a squad still knitting together, scraping by in one-goal games, and leaning on moments rather than sustained control.
Miovski provided the latest of those moments. The question now is whether that instinctive finish was just a stay of execution in the title race, or the spark that ignites Rangers before Celtic arrive to test every fragile claim of progress.
