McInnes is SO LUCKY to have this player! 🔵🔥 Rangers won today because of his BRILLIANT performance!
Derek McInnes had a decision to make inside the first ten minutes of Saturday’s game against Motherwell, and it wasn’t one he wanted. Lawrence Shankland, his captain and talisman, was already down clutching his hamstring, and the manager had to send a replacement into a match that had barely started. What followed showed exactly why McInnes trusted the man he sent on: Ryan Naderi needed only a matter of minutes on the pitch to strike the goal that won the game, sealing Rangers’ third straight William Hill Premiership victory and turning a day that began in crisis into one of quiet triumph.
There is a particular kind of pressure that comes with being summoned from the bench in the opening exchanges of a match, especially when the reason for the change is an injury to your captain. Games can unravel quickly when a team loses its rhythm early, and McInnes admitted after the match that he had briefly considered throwing Naderi straight on the moment Shankland went down, before deciding to take a beat and introduce him at what he judged to be the right moment. That patience paid off. Naderi settled almost instantly, and it wasn’t long before he’d turned the contest in Rangers’ favour with a clinical finish that separated the two sides for good.
McInnes was fulsome in his praise afterwards, saying Naderi had “answered up brilliantly” and that he was delighted for a player who has now racked up a handful of goals already this season — form, in the manager’s words, that “will do him the world of good.” It’s the sort of endorsement that carries extra weight given the circumstances: this wasn’t a substitute appearance in a game already won, or a late cameo against tiring legs. This was a teenager, in effect, thrust into the responsibility of leading Rangers’ attack in place of their record-signing captain, in front of an Ibrox crowd who had just watched their skipper limp off in obvious pain.
What made Naderi’s contribution all the more striking was the scale of what he was being asked to replace. Shankland had arrived at Rangers this summer as the club’s marquee attacking addition, a boyhood supporter finally living out the transfer he had been linked with for years, and had just begun to find genuinely dangerous form — three goals in his previous two outings before the injury struck. Losing that kind of form and presence inside ten minutes of a match is the sort of blow that can derail a team’s entire afternoon. Instead, Rangers barely broke stride.
Some credit for that belongs to the platform his teammates gave him — Rangers dominated large stretches of the game and created a stream of good chances even before and after the goal, with McInnes noting his side’s attacking threat pleased him even as they were guilty of not putting the match to bed earlier than they eventually did. But credit also has to go to Naderi himself for taking the one clear opportunity that mattered. In a game that finished 1-0, margins are thin, and it was his composure in front of goal, arriving in the box at precisely the right moment, that turned Rangers’ pressure into three points rather than a frustrating draw
Naderi’s afternoon fits into a broader story that has been building around this Rangers squad in recent weeks: a group finding different heroes on different days as they search for consistency under a new head coach. Djeidi Gassama was singled out separately as one of the standout performers on the pitch against Motherwell, while further up the pitch new record signing Kevin Kelsy made his own competitive debut off the bench, offering a glimpse of the physical presence Rangers hope will eventually share the goalscoring load. That kind of strength in depth — multiple players capable of stepping up when needed — is exactly what McInnes has been trying to build after a summer of substantial squad turnover, and Saturday offered a timely reminder of why it matters.
It is worth remembering, too, the context in which this depth is being tested. Rangers had already lost forward Youssef Chermiti for what is expected to be the bulk of the season with a serious knee injury, and now face an extended absence for Shankland as well. In that light, Naderi’s impact substitute performance becomes more than just a nice moment on an ordinary Saturday — it becomes a genuinely important data point for a club that now needs contributions from up and down its forward line rather than relying on one or two senior figures to carry the goalscoring burden.
McInnes, for his part, struck a tone after the match that mixed satisfaction with realism. He was pleased with the professionalism of the win and, in particular, with how his side responded to adversity so early in the game, but he was equally clear that there is still work to do in front of goal — pointing out that Rangers should have made the game safer sooner given the number of clear opportunities they created. That is the tension every promising young team faces: delighted with a result delivered under difficult circumstances, but conscious that relying on moments of individual quality from a substitute, rather than ruthlessly punishing dominance with several goals, is not a formula that will always work against stronger opposition.
Still, there was no mistaking the warmth in how McInnes spoke about Naderi specifically. This is a manager who has already shown, through his handling of the Shankland injury itself, that he chooses his words carefully and avoids overstatement. When he says a player has answered up brilliantly and that the goal will do him a world of good, it is a deliberate signal — both to the player himself and to a watching support anxious about life without their captain — that there is a path forward even in adversity
The scale of what Naderi’s goal actually solved shouldn’t be overstated: one impact substitution does not erase the concern hanging over Rangers following Shankland’s injury, nor does it answer every question about the club’s ability to cope through an Old Firm double-header against Celtic in the coming fortnight. But it does offer something valuable at exactly the right moment — proof that the squad assembled over a busy summer of recruitment has more than one route to goal, and a young player who has now shown, under real pressure, that he can be trusted with responsibility when it matters most.
For a club bracing for what could be a lengthy spell without its captain, that kind of reassurance is not nothing. Naderi will not have set out to be the headline story of the day — that was always going to be Shankland’s injury, for all the wrong reasons. But in the moment his team needed someone to step up, he did exactly that, and gave Rangers fans a genuine reason for optimism on an afternoon that had threatened to turn sour inside the opening ten minutes.
