Scott Arfield reveals why Nicolas Raskin was ‘screaming’ at fellow Rangers star vs Celtic
A brief moment of visible frustration in the middle of the park during Rangers’ 1-0 win over Celtic has offered fresh insight into exactly what makes Nicolas Raskin tick — and, according to former Ibrox midfielder Scott Arfield, it’s precisely the kind of behaviour that explains why so many at the club have long viewed the Belgian as a future captain.
According to Arfield’s post-match analysis, Raskin was seen “screaming” at teammate Kim Min-su during Sunday’s derby win, frustrated that he hadn’t been slid through into space when the opportunity arose. It’s a small moment in the context of a match that Rangers ultimately won comfortably enough, courtesy of Ryan Naderi’s first-half finish, but it’s exactly the kind of detail that tends to catch the eye of a former professional watching closely — a reminder that even in matches heading toward a positive result, some players simply refuse to switch off their demand for more.
Arfield framed the incident as evidence of Raskin’s high standards rather than any kind of criticism of a teammate or a symptom of tension within the squad. In Arfield’s reading, it’s precisely this refusal to settle — even for a single misplaced pass in a game Rangers were controlling — that underlines why the Belgian midfielder has become such an important figure in Rangers’ recent resurgence under Derek McInnes
This isn’t the first time Arfield has gone out of his way to praise Raskin’s temperament and leadership qualities. Rewind back to the summer of 2023, shortly after Arfield himself had left Rangers for a new challenge in MLS with Charlotte, and the former midfielder was already talking up Raskin’s credentials in remarkably similar terms — a fact that adds real weight to Sunday’s comments, given they’re not simply reactive praise following one good derby performance, but the continuation of a view Arfield has held consistently for years.
Speaking to the Daily Record back in July 2023, not long after Raskin had joined Rangers from Standard Liege, Arfield described being genuinely taken aback by how the young Belgian carried himself from his very first training sessions at the club. “As football players, you subconsciously judge each other,” Arfield explained at the time. “I was getting judged in my first training session here. You do it. How’s your touch? How’s your weight of pass? How did he get on it? Did he scan his shoulder? There are loads of little things that you look for in a football player.” Even against that exacting internal checklist, Raskin stood out immediately. “In terms of Nico, in his first two training sessions, he was sensational,” Arfield said. “You could see that he is built to play at a club the size of Rangers. I can see him playing there for years. He is captain material. Even at such a young age, you can really lean on him. He takes the ball, he is comfortable with the ball, he has a great temperament in the middle of the pitch.”
That’s a remarkably prescient set of comments given how Raskin’s Rangers career has since developed. Signed initially in January 2023 during Michael Beale’s time in charge, Raskin was earmarked early on — by Arfield and others inside the club — as a long-term successor to James Tavernier in terms of on-pitch leadership, someone whose temperament and composure on the ball marked him out as unusually mature for a player still establishing himself in a new league and a new country.
Raskin’s early adaptation to Scottish football wasn’t without its challenges, as is almost always the case for a young midfielder moving from a smaller European league into the unique intensity of the Old Firm rivalry. Speaking to Sky Sports ahead of a Scottish Cup semi-final against Celtic in his first season at the club, Raskin reflected candidly on how much the fixture had already come to mean to him, despite having only recently arrived in Scotland. Recalling the sting of watching Celtic celebrate a League Cup final win over Rangers from the substitutes’ bench, he didn’t hide his hunger to be more directly involved in delivering the opposite outcome: “The last time we lost this game and it was painful to see them enjoying it with their fans and see our fans sad. We will go for it,” he said, adding that he was still acclimatising to Scottish football but relishing the unique atmosphere the Old Firm fixture generates. “When you have 60,000 that are so passionate you can feel it, it is something you don’t see in every country. You need to see it and feel it to understand what it is.”
That early period also saw Raskin openly discuss the personal stakes involved in facing Celtic specifically, framing it in terms that suggested he understood immediately just how central this rivalry is to life at Ibrox: “It’s very important for two reasons. We need to win something for the season and it is our last chance. And also we want to win against them,” he said at the time, before adding a note of quiet self-belief that would prove characteristic of his subsequent development: “I’m sure if we play our best we can do something good. We have to go there with a strong mentality and go for it.”
Fast forward to the present, and Raskin’s development from promising newcomer to genuinely commanding first-choice midfielder has become one of the clearer throughlines of Rangers’ recent resurgence under Derek McInnes. His partnership alongside Dan Neil in central midfield has been repeatedly credited as a central factor in Rangers’ back-to-back Old Firm victories this month — first in the emphatic 3-0 League Cup win at Ibrox, and then in Sunday’s tighter but no less significant 1-0 Premiership win at Celtic Park.
In both games, pundits and match reports alike have pointed to Raskin and Neil’s dominance of Celtic’s own central midfield as a key tactical factor behind Rangers’ success, with the pairing repeatedly described as bullying their Celtic counterparts out of the game’s midfield battle. Raskin’s own contribution to Sunday’s derby specifically was praised for showing all his experience of previous Old Firm occasions — a phrase that, on reflection, captures something genuinely notable about his career trajectory. This was a player facing Celtic in a competitive fixture for what is now, cumulatively, a significant number of occasions since his January 2023 arrival, and each time that experience appears to be paying increasing dividends in terms of composure, aggression, and now, evidently, an outspoken refusal to accept anything less than maximum effort and precision from those around him.
It’s worth pausing on why an incident as small as a shout of frustration over a missed through-ball has become a genuine talking point, rather than being dismissed as an unremarkable, everyday moment of on-pitch communication. Football is, after all, full of players gesturing for passes, appealing for decisions, and occasionally venting frustration at teammates during the ordinary flow of a match — most such moments pass entirely unremarked upon by pundits or media.
What elevates this particular incident is the broader context Arfield has built around it: a years-long, consistent narrative in which he’s positioned Raskin as a natural leader, someone whose temperament marks him out from typical young midfielders. Viewed through that lens, the “screaming” moment becomes less an isolated flash of frustration and more a small, visible data point supporting a much larger claim — that Raskin possesses exactly the kind of demanding, uncompromising standards that eventually translate into captaincy material at a club of Rangers’ size and history.
There’s also a tactical dimension worth considering. Rangers were already 1-0 up at the point the incident reportedly occurred, controlling the game against a Celtic side that had, by that stage, lost three matches in the space of a single week across domestic cup, league, and European competition. In a match that Rangers were winning and largely dictating, a lesser competitor might have been content to see out the remaining minutes without pushing for more. Raskin’s audible frustration at not being played through for what could have been a second goal — extending Rangers’ lead and further extinguishing any lingering hope of a Celtic comeback — reflects a mentality focused on maximising the result rather than simply protecting it, a trait that speaks directly to the “high standards” framing Arfield used to describe the incident
Assessed alongside the club’s broader trajectory this season, Raskin’s continued development into a vocal, demanding presence in central midfield arrives at a particularly opportune moment. Rangers have endured a genuinely difficult start to Derek McInnes’s tenure as manager, compounded by a lengthy list of injuries across the squad — Lawrence Shankland’s hamstring surgery, Youssef Chermiti’s season-ending ACL damage, and further fitness concerns affecting Daisuke Yokota, Tuur Rommens and others. Amid that turbulence, having established, experienced figures in the dressing room capable of driving standards on the pitch, even in games that are already going well, represents exactly the kind of quiet cultural underpinning that can help a squad sustain form through a demanding season featuring domestic cups, European competition, and now a genuinely tightening title race.
Raskin’s own numbers this season back up the sense of a player entering a new level of influence. Since his January 2023 arrival from Standard Liege, he’s steadily worked his way from a promising rotation option into one of the first names on Rangers’ team sheet, and his role alongside Neil in this month’s Old Firm double has arguably represented the clearest individual validation yet of the “captain material” tag Arfield first attached to him more than two years ago
Looking back at Arfield’s original 2023 comments with the benefit of hindsight, it’s striking how accurately he seemed to read Raskin’s character and trajectory from little more than a couple of early training sessions. “I can see him playing there for years,” Arfield had said at the time — a prediction that, three years on, has held up well, with Raskin remaining a key fixture of the Rangers midfield through multiple managerial changes and squad overhauls. His assessment that Raskin possessed “a great temperament in the middle of the pitch” likewise seems to have anticipated exactly the kind of composed, demanding on-field presence that’s now being credited with helping Rangers dominate central midfield battles against Celtic specifically — the club’s most important fixture, played out in front of the most intense scrutiny Scottish football has to offer.
Whether Raskin ultimately ends up wearing the Rangers captain’s armband, as Arfield has long predicted, remains to be seen — that decision rests with the club’s hierarchy and current captain James Tavernier’s own continued place in the side. But moments like Sunday’s audible frustration with Kim Min-su offer a small, telling glimpse into exactly the kind of mentality that made Arfield so confident, back in 2023, that Rangers had found a long-term leader in their midfield — a conviction that two consecutive derby wins over Celtic this month have done little to undermine.
