Rangers Show Signs of Life in Victory Over Aberdeen

Rangers finally found something that looked like a football team on Sunday. It has taken far too long.

The season so far has been grim. Recruitment has dragged, the European campaign – if you’re being generous calling it that – was a disgrace, and Derek McInnes has spent weeks flinging ideas at his squad in the hope one of them might work. Line-ups, systems, substitutions: all over the place.

Against Aberdeen, though, there was at last a glimpse of order. This was the version of Rangers many expected from day one under McInnes – solid, structured, and just about ruthless enough to get over the line. It wasn’t spectacular. It didn’t need to be. It was competent and controlled, which is a step up on what has gone before.

Two players carried the attacking threat. Kim Min-Su played like he wanted the whole operation to run through him, demanding the ball, knitting moves together, showing for it again and again. Djeidi Gassama buzzed around him, sharp and lively, the one runner Aberdeen never quite got to grips with. Beyond them, there wasn’t much to shout about in the final third, but they gave Rangers a platform.

The big calls went with Rangers, but they were the right ones. Referee Matthew MacDermid will not be popular in certain corners of the internet, yet on the major incidents he was spot on. The noise online around Kevin Nisbet’s disallowed goal has already started, the usual contrived outrage, but the decision was clear. There were two separate offences: a shove on Dujon Sterling and an offside. Either one kills the goal. Together, they leave no debate.

That clarity summed up the afternoon. Rangers didn’t dazzle, they didn’t cut loose, but they did the basics and they did them properly. After the chaos of recent weeks, a win built on comfort and solidity is no bad thing.

Now it has to mean something.

Falkirk on Wednesday cannot be a step backwards. This result has to be a platform, not an outlier that gets talked about in a month’s time as the day it briefly looked like coming together before falling apart again.

Off the pitch, the work is even more urgent. The squad is miles from where it needs to be. A striker has been heavily linked and simply has to arrive. Another right winger is required. Two midfielders as well. That’s the scale of the job still facing the club before the window shuts.

Sunday might have steadied the ship for a day. The question is whether Rangers can now turn one functional performance into a season that actually resembles their ambitions.