One chance, taken
Rangers did not play well at Celtic Park this afternoon. They did not need to. Ryan Naderi’s 33rd-minute finish settled the Old Firm derby 1-0 and completed a week that Celtic will want back.
The goal came from a corner the hosts only half-cleared. Kim Min-Su met the loose ball with a dipping strike that Viljami Sinisalo could only parry, and Naderi followed in to finish into a largely open net. It arrived against the run of play. Celtic had spent the opening half-hour on the front foot, claiming a penalty when Camilo Duran was bundled over by Emmanuel Fernandez, watching Auston Trusty’s sixth-minute volley chalked off for a Liam Scales offside, then seeing Kiernan Tierney hammer the crossbar.
Fernandez, already booked, was fortunate to stay on after chopping down Benjamin Nygren. Rangers came close to a second before the break, Djeidi Gassama clipping the post and Cameron Carter-Vickers blocking Kevin Kelsy’s follow-up.
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The numbers behind the scoreline
Celtic finished with five shots. One was on target. Their chances added up to 0.71 expected goals. Rangers had 15 attempts and put eight on target, a wide gap for a home side that started as the better team.
Colby Donovan’s powerful header just after the restart drew a superb save from Ivor Pandur, and Olwethu Makhanya’s strike in the 74th minute was ruled out by VAR for handball. Martin O’Neill’s side had their moments. They made very little of them.
The defeat ended a 13-game Celtic winning run in the league, their longest heading into a top-flight meeting with Rangers since March 2017, when a 22-game streak was stopped by a 1-1 draw with these same opponents. Rangers have now won five league matches in a row and sit two points behind Celtic at the top of the Scottish Premiership.
McInnes joins Souness in the books
Derek McInnes started badly at Ibrox. He is now in territory only one predecessor has reached. The former Hearts manager has become the second Rangers boss to win each of his first two Old Firm derbies in all competitions, after Graeme Souness in 1986. He is also the third in the club’s history to face Celtic twice on the spin and win both, following Scot Symon in 1960 and Walter Smith in 1998.
Celtic were beaten 3-0 at Ibrox in the League Cup last week. O’Neill said afterwards that this meeting would be different. It was closer. The result was the same.
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