McInnes delivers togetherness & intensity in Old Firm gobsmacker

McInnes delivers togetherness & intensity in Old Firm gobsmacker. Few Old Firm games surprise you anymore, but this one was a gobsmacker.

What happened

Rangers had all the intensity and all the togetherness. BBC Scotland's chief sportswriter Tom English analyses Rangers' convincing Old Firm victory over Celtic at Ibrox. In his early months in the job, Derek McInnes has been looking for a marquee performance. They had six players making their Old Firm debut from the start but if inexperience can be a challenge in this fixture then it was a challenge they met with gusto. McInnes and his driven and vastly superior players neutralised Celtic, shut them down, rendered them impotent.

McInnes might have hit on something substantialWhere did this come from? McInnes might have hit on something substantial.

The wider picture

When McInnes' side made it two it was only what they deserved. Given some of the vile songs that were directed at O'Neill at Ibrox then McInnes is in for some treatment. McInnes was measured in the aftermath, more low-key than you might have expected and there was sense in that. Image source, SNSByTom EnglishBBC Scotland's chief sports writer at IbroxPublished13 September 2026Fifty-five minutes into this Rangers romp at Ibrox, Martin O'Neill and Shaun Maloney stood beside each other in the Celtic technical area, chin-stroking, head-scratching, pointing, waving, drowning.

To them, in this moment, this Premier Sports Cup quarter-final must have felt like a surreal and nightmarish occasion – and it was only 1-0 at the time. Rangers had really only started to wreak their havoc. Such was Rangers' dominance, their complete owning of their visitors in every conceivable category, the Celtic managerial brains trust seemed just as lost as every one of their players on the field. Man for man, Rangers won every battle, not for 45 minutes but for the full ninety.

What has been reported

Rangers overwhelm meek Celtic to clinch semi-final spotSimplicity of progression was surrealNo away fans, of course. Being locked out of Ibrox might have seemed like a curse to Celtic folk. In the end, it must have felt like the greatest blessing. He was looking for a formation that worked and personnel that were big enough and bold enough to execute it and he got that, too. The simplicity of their progression to the semi-final was a touch surreal.

Neither of these were in particularly good form coming into this. They were both winning, yes, but they haven't been all that convincing. This season, in their last eight domestic features combined – all won, in fairness – there was only a goal in it at the end in seven of them.

What happens next

Both sides had got themselves into a cycle of missed chances and, at times, uncomfortable days. O'Neill is such a winning machine that many would have expected Celtic to find a way, somehow. Celtic captain Callum McGregor lords it over days like this, but the supreme central midfielder was Dan Neil, not just in his outstanding goals but in the control and the leadership he exerted. With Nico Raskin beside him it was a no-contest in the middle of the pitch.

James Penrice did a power of really good work in there, too. Camilo Duran, playing wide again instead of through the middle, has been one of the players of the season so far, but he hardly existed, totally bossed by Olwethu Makhanya – calm in the maelstrom, classy in nearly everything he did. Kasper Hogh needed a goal having scored in just one game in six – a hat-trick, albeit – but the record signing spent much of his day in Emmanuel Fernandez's pocket.