Rangers needed a stoppage-time goal to break the deadlock in Wednesday’s rearranged Scottish Premiership fixture against St Mirren at Ibrox.
Bojan Miovski’s goal in the first minute of time added on earned Rangers a fourth league win in a row, just as a win by the same scoreline against the same opponents kicked off a four-match winning run to end last season.
It’s been all change in the west of Glasgow since then. Danny Rohl’s management kept the Gers in the title race for longer than they might otherwise have been involved but was tempted away to Red Bull Salzburg and succeeded by Derek McInnes.
Shankland injury will test the ex-Hearts revolution at Ibrox
The new Rangers manager pushed Celtic even further in 2025/26, when he was in charge of Heart of Midlothian and took them to the cusp of a fifth league title to earn his dream job.
McInnes was able to take international striker Lawrence Shankland – his talismanic Hearts captain and another Rangers man at heart – across the central belt to Glasgow. That’s just how Scottish football works; Rangers have won the title 55 times.
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This season is only six matches old and Hearts have a game in hand on their old gaffer, but Celtic are first and Rangers are second. Four wins on the bounce have reinforced McInnes’ credentials at the helm of a team comparatively short of raw quality.
More than a few of their points can be credited to character over straightforward ability. Just as they started to feel a little more convincing, McInnes lost his general.
His team beat St Mirren without Shankland, who was substituted eight minutes of last weekend’s win over Motherwell before a hamstring injury forced him off.
“It's a 2C tear and similar to the one he did previously at Hearts in January,” McInnes told reporters before Rangers played the Buddies.
“He's actually in London now, he's getting an ultrasound scan, a follow-up scan, which is just to determine whether, with the specialist, he has surgery or whether he'll just let it heal naturally like he did the last time.
“My little knowledge I have of it is that if he has the surgery then he might be an extra three or four weeks.
“I think best-case scenario, three months, probably worst-case scenario in terms of time about four months.”
Rangers’ captain was starting to suit the armband before his setback
It’s a brutal blow, not only for the 31-year-old Glaswegian but for a manager who must now hold steady without a player he knows well and had been starting to show his worth in the Rangers shirt he’d wanted for a lifetime. Their four-match winning run started with a 1-0 win against Aberdeen and a 2-1 victory at Falkirk in the space of four days.
Shankland, suddenly puffing out his chest in a shirt that finally seemed to fit, scored all three goals. He’d only scored once in the Europa League qualifiers, Conference League qualifiers, Premier Sports Cup tie and two Premiership matches that preceded them.
Indeed, it’s what came before those wins that points to the extent of the challenge now facing McInnes. If first impressions matter, his did little to reassure Rangers fans that McInnes – by no means an unfamiliar figure to anyone involved in Scottish football – has what it takes to achieve the one thing that really matters in Glasgow.
The Gers were knocked out of Europe before it started. Twice. Their Europa League campaign began and ended against Jagiellonia Bialystok of Poland in the third qualifying round.
They dropped into the play-off round of the Conference League. Shankland, Miovski and Thelo Aasgaard scored their first three penalties, but Czech side Jablonec ended up on the right end of the shoot-out.
All that’s left, on three fronts, is to attempt to better Celtic. They’ll get their chance on Sunday in the first Old Firm derby of the season, a Premier Sports Cup quarter-final tie at Ibrox that Shankland will have to watch from the sidelines.
Rangers’ recent burst was a big step forward in the early part of McInnes’ return as manager, but Shankland was the man putting the ball in the net.
They made a positive start without him, beating Motherwell and St Mirren in 1-0 matches that couldn’t have been much more different in terms of their comfort levels for the Ibrox club.
23-year-old Ryan Naderi, who joined Rangers in February, came off the bench to replace Shankland against the Steelmen and scored through sheer tenacity within four minutes.
His smart flick-on set up Miovski’s looping winner against St Mirren too but they really had to work for it against the determined defence and pointed threat of a team led by August’s Manager of the Month.
But Rangers are already operating with fine margins game-by-game and Shankland is a born difference-maker. The question for McInnes and Rangers is where they can find that difference on consistent basis over the next 16 weeks and more.
