McINNES TARGETS WINNING START AT TANNADICE AS RANGERS BEGIN NEW SEASON AGAINST RESURGENT DUNDEE UNITED

Rangers and Dundee United kick off their respective 2026-27 Scottish Premiership campaigns against one another on Friday night, with Tannadice Park hosting a fixture that carries added intrigue given the contrasting trajectories both clubs find themselves on heading into the new season, and the fact that it marks the first genuinely competitive test of the Derek McInnes era at Ibrox. Dundee United enter the match looking to bounce back from a disappointing slide down the table last term, while Rangers arrive full of confidence after an encouraging pre-season under their new manager, setting the stage for an opening-weekend contest that promises to offer plenty of talking points regardless of the eventual outcome.

Jim Goodwin’s Dundee United side endured something of a mixed campaign in 2025-26, and the manner in which last season petered out will still be fresh in the memory of supporters at Tannadice. Having enjoyed a superb first year back in the Scottish Premiership that saw them finish fourth, the Tangerines were unable to build on that platform and instead slipped to seventh, a outcome that will have left many inside the club feeling the previous campaign represented a missed opportunity rather than a natural continuation of their progress. The manner of that decline was particularly frustrating, with Dundee United losing two and drawing two of their final four league matches, a stumble across the finishing line that took much of the shine off what had, for long periods, looked like another solid season of Premiership football on Tayside.

Encouragingly for Goodwin and his players, however, the early signs from this new campaign suggest United have shaken off any lingering hangover from that late-season slump. The Tangerines produced an excellent Scottish League Cup group campaign, winning three of their four fixtures and losing only once, a run of form that was good enough to secure top spot in Group B and guarantee progression to the next round of that competition. That kind of consistency across a condensed group phase will have given Goodwin plenty of encouragement heading into the league season proper, even if a subsequent pre-season friendly defeat to English side Salford City, going down 3-2 just last weekend, served as a timely reminder that there is still work to be done before United can consider themselves fully primed for the rigours of a full Premiership campaign.

Whatever confidence that League Cup form has generated around Tannadice, however, history offers a sobering reality check when it comes to matches against Rangers specifically. Dundee United have not beaten the Glasgow side since August 2021, a run stretching back several years now, and the numbers since that victory make for particularly grim reading from a Tangerines perspective: nine defeats and four draws across the 13 meetings that have followed. Breaking that duck against a Rangers side entering the fixture under a new manager and full of pre-season momentum will represent a significant challenge, but there would be no better time for Goodwin’s side to finally end that losing sequence than on home turf, in front of their own supporters, on the opening weekend of a new campaign where anything still feels possible before the accumulated weight of results begins to bear down on either side.

For Rangers, this fixture represents the first proper examination of life under Derek McInnes in a competitive setting, and the early signs from pre-season have offered plenty of encouragement to a fanbase eager to see the new manager hit the ground running. McInnes arrived at Ibrox in circumstances that carried their own bittersweet quality, having taken charge of the Light Blues only weeks after suffering Scottish Premiership heartbreak with Hearts, missing out on the title on the very final day of last season as Celtic were confirmed as champions. That near-miss will undoubtedly still sting for a manager who came agonisingly close to landing the biggest prize of his career at Tynecastle, but Rangers moved swiftly to appoint him following Danny Rohl’s departure to Red Bull Salzburg in June, and McInnes has wasted little time in stamping his own mark on preparations at Ibrox.

His start in the Rangers dugout has been a positive one by any measure. McInnes began his tenure with a 2-1 pre-season victory over French side Saint-Etienne, before following that up with a goalless draw against Premier League opposition in the shape of West Ham United, results that will have given both the manager and his squad genuine confidence heading into the serious business of the new league campaign. Friday’s trip to Tannadice represents McInnes’s first competitive fixture in interim charge of Rangers, and he will be desperate to translate that positive pre-season form into three points at the first genuine opportunity, aware that early results in a new managerial tenure tend to carry outsized significance in shaping both public and internal perceptions of how a project is progressing.

There was, for a period, genuine uncertainty over whether McInnes would even be present in the Ibrox dugout for this opening fixture. The new Rangers boss had been expected to serve the first of a three-match Scottish FA suspension on Friday night, a punishment stemming from comments he made about referee John Beaton at the end of last season while still in charge at Hearts. That situation has since been resolved, at least temporarily, with the ban placed on hold after Rangers confirmed their intention to formally appeal the suspension on their new manager’s behalf. As things stand, McInnes will therefore be free to take his place on the touchline against Dundee United, sparing Rangers the awkward scenario of having to navigate their season-opening fixture without their new head coach present in the dugout for what would otherwise have been a deeply unwelcome start to his tenure regardless of how the appeal process ultimately concludes.

Should Rangers manage to secure victory on Friday, it would mark their first opening-day win since beating Livingston 2-1 back in the 2022-23 season under Giovanni van Bronckhorst, a reminder that even a club of Rangers’ stature and resources has not always managed to begin its Premiership campaigns with the kind of assured start supporters have come to expect. The broader head-to-head record against Dundee United, however, offers Rangers considerable encouragement heading into Friday’s contest. The Ibrox side have won nine of the last 13 meetings between the two clubs, a dominant recent record that speaks to the gulf that has generally existed between the sides whenever they have met in the Scottish Premiership. McInnes himself carries a strong personal record against Dundee United too, having won six and drawn three of his last nine encounters with the Tangerines across his managerial career, with his most recent defeat against them coming back in November 2022 during his time in charge of Kilmarnock, a heavy 4-0 loss that stands as something of an outlier within an otherwise favourable record against Friday’s opponents.

Turning to team news, Dundee United will be without midfielder Miller Thomson, who is sidelined through an ankle injury, though Goodwin is otherwise expected to have the remainder of his squad available for selection. One name likely to catch the eye of Rangers supporters scouting the opposition is Lachlan Rose, the striker who arrived from Newcastle Jets earlier in the summer and has already made an immediate impact in front of goal, netting three times during United’s productive Scottish League Cup group campaign. Rose could well line up alongside fellow forward Zac Sapsford and summer signing Jesse Randall in what looks likely to be an attacking trio tasked with testing a Rangers defence that will itself be adjusting to life under a new manager and, potentially, unfamiliar personnel combinations at the back. Further back for the hosts, goalkeeper Jack James Walton has enjoyed an excellent start to the campaign between the posts, conceding just a single goal across his first four competitive outings for the Tangerines, and he will be aiming to add another clean sheet to that impressive early record on Friday night, even if doing so against a Rangers side expected to carry significant attacking threat represents a considerably sterner test than anything he has faced during the League Cup group stages.

Rangers, for their part, head into the match with one or two selection headaches of their own to navigate. McInnes has already confirmed that Nicolas Raskin, whose long-term Ibrox future has been the subject of persistent transfer speculation throughout the summer, will not be involved in Friday’s squad, while both Jose Cifuentes and Ross McCrorie are considered doubts due to ongoing injury concerns. On a more positive note for the visitors, several of the club’s high-profile summer signings look set to make their competitive debuts in Rangers colours at Tannadice, with new captain Lawrence Shankland and midfielder Cameron Devlin, both of whom followed McInnes to Ibrox from Hearts, in line to feature from the outset. Shankland could be deployed just behind Youssef Chermiti in a more advanced role, looking to combine with the Portuguese forward to give Rangers a genuine cutting edge in the final third, while Devlin may line up alongside Dan Neil at the base of midfield, the pairing offering a blend of physicality and composure that McInnes will hope can control the tempo of the match from deep positions.

Based on the expected lineups, Dundee United look likely to set up with Walton in goal behind a back four of Naamo, Iovu, Forbes and Ferry, with Camara, Tait and Eskesen forming a midfield three in front of them, and Randall, Rose and Sapsford spearheading the attack. Rangers, meanwhile, are anticipated to field Pandur in goal, protected by a back four featuring Sterling, Fernandez, Godfrey and Rommens, with Neil and Devlin operating as a double pivot in midfield. Ahead of them, Curtis, Shankland and Gassama look set to occupy the more advanced midfield and wide positions, feeding a lone frontman in Chermiti, though McInnes retains the flexibility to tweak that shape depending on how the match unfolds and how his new-look squad settles into competitive action for the first time together.

Recent form heading into the fixture tells its own story of two clubs travelling in slightly different directions across their most recent outings, even accounting for the mixture of competitive and friendly results feeding into that picture. Dundee United’s form across all competitions reads loss, win, win, loss, win, a pattern that reflects the earlier described mix of strong League Cup form undermined by the more recent friendly setback against Salford City. Rangers, by contrast, have managed only two outings in this particular sample, drawing with West Ham United before following that up with a win, though the smaller sample size for the Ibrox side reflects the fact that McInnes has only been in charge for a relatively short period and has therefore had fewer opportunities to test his new group in match conditions compared to a Dundee United side that has already ground through a full League Cup group phase.

Given the balance of recent head-to-head history, McInnes’s own strong personal record against Dundee United, and the sense of momentum Rangers appear to be carrying into the new season under their new manager, the visitors will head into Friday’s contest as clear favourites to secure the win, with a comfortable scoreline of 2-0 in Rangers’ favour representing a reasonable expectation given all of the factors in play. Dundee United’s home advantage and their own recent competitive sharpness from the League Cup campaign should not be entirely discounted, and Goodwin’s side will fancy their chances of making life uncomfortable for a Rangers team still bedding in several high-profile new arrivals, but the historical weight of recent meetings between these two clubs, combined with the quality McInnes has assembled during an eventful summer of transfer activity, points toward another frustrating night for the Tangerines against opponents who have so consistently had the better of this fixture in recent seasons.

There is also a broader storyline worth considering around McInnes’s decision to bring several Hearts players with him to Ibrox, a pattern that extends well beyond simply Shankland and Devlin. Managers switching clubs mid-window and taking trusted lieutenants with them is far from unusual in modern football, but doing so on the scale McInnes appears to have managed this summer carries both obvious advantages and potential risks. On the positive side, it allows a new manager to hit the ground running with players who already understand his methods, his tactical demands and his standards around training intensity and preparation, cutting down considerably on the usual bedding-in period that comes with wholesale squad turnover. The flip side is that it can occasionally create an uneven dynamic within a dressing room, with players who arrived under the previous regime potentially feeling like outsiders compared to a clique of familiar faces who already enjoy the manager’s trust from their time together elsewhere. How McInnes manages that dynamic across the coming weeks and months, blending his trusted Hearts contingent with the substantial core of players who were already at Ibrox before his arrival, will be one of the more subtle but important storylines to track as the season develops beyond Friday’s opening fixture.

The absence of Raskin from Friday’s squad also deserves further scrutiny given how prominently his situation has featured in transfer speculation throughout the summer. With his long-term Ibrox future increasingly uncertain and interest from elsewhere in Europe reportedly gathering pace, leaving him out of the matchday squad for the opening league fixture could be read in a number of ways. It may simply reflect a tactical or fitness-based decision entirely unconnected to the swirling transfer talk, or it could hint at a club increasingly resigned to losing the midfielder before the window closes and understandably reluctant to risk an injury or accumulate additional wear on a player who may yet generate a significant transfer fee. Either way, his omission will not go unnoticed by a Rangers support already bracing itself for the possibility of losing one of the more accomplished midfielders to have represented the club in recent seasons, and Friday’s team news only adds another data point to a situation that looks increasingly likely to be resolved one way or another before the transfer deadline finally arrives.

Dundee United’s own summer recruitment drive should not be overlooked either when assessing how competitive Friday’s contest might prove to be. Beyond Rose’s early goalscoring exploits, Goodwin has clearly targeted attacking reinforcement as a priority area, bringing in both Randall and Rose specifically to add firepower to a Tangerines side that will need goals if they are to arrest last season’s late slide down the table and mount a more sustained push toward the top half of the division this time around. Whether that new-look front line can trouble a Rangers defensive unit still finding its feet under a new manager remains one of the more intriguing tactical questions hanging over Friday’s contest, and a strong early return from Rose in particular would offer Dundee United genuine hope of ending their lengthy winless run against Rangers sooner rather than later. extending well beyond the standard opening-weekend narrative of renewed optimism and fresh starts. For Dundee United, it offers a genuine opportunity to end a losing run against Rangers that stretches back the best part of five years, and to prove that last season’s disappointing conclusion was an aberration rather than a sign of a club regressing after the promise shown in their first campaign back in the top flight. For Rangers and McInnes, it represents the first real chance to translate an encouraging pre-season into competitive points on the board, to give a new captain in Lawrence Shankland his first taste of leading the side out in a fixture that actually counts, and to begin answering the questions that will inevitably follow any manager taking charge of a club with such lofty expectations attached to every single result. Whatever unfolds at Tannadice on Friday evening, both sets of supporters will leave with a clearer sense of where their respective clubs currently stand as the long grind of a new Scottish Premiership campaign finally gets under way.