Celtic 0-1 Rangers: Naderi Strike Completes Second Old Firm Win in Eight Days as Hoops’ Lead Cut to
Ryan Naderi’s first-half strike was enough to give Rangers a second Old Firm win in the space of eight days, as Derek McInnes’s side backed up their 3-0 League Cup quarter-final rout at Ibrox the previous weekend with a 1-0 league victory at Celtic Park that cut Celtic’s Premiership lead to just two points.
Played entirely in front of Celtic’s own supporters after a ticket allocation dispute between the two clubs, the derby began with early warning signs for the visitors. Auston Trusty thought he had put the hosts ahead inside five minutes with a close-range volley, only for the effort to be ruled out for offside against Liam Scales in the build-up. Moments later Kieran Tierney rattled the crossbar with a thunderous strike from distance, and for a spell it looked as though Rangers might be pinned back in the way they had comfortably avoided a week earlier at Ibrox.
Instead, it was Rangers who struck first, and via a route that will have frustrated Martin O’Neill more than most. James Penrice’s corner was met by Kim Min-Su, whose powerful header was parried by Celtic goalkeeper Viljami Sinisalo — but only as far as Naderi, who reacted quickest to the loose ball and smashed it home from close range in the 33rd minute. Former Celtic player Charlie Nicholas, working as a pundit on the broadcast, was blunt in his assessment of the goal: “That was terrible. The defence didn’t react. Naderi was off the back of [Benjamin] Nygren. As soon as the ball came in, he was the first to react, alert, and found the back of the net.”
Rangers almost doubled their advantage within minutes. Djeidi Gassama broke clear of the Celtic backline and curled an effort against the post, a let-off that allowed the hosts to reach half-time only a single goal down having enjoyed spells of pressure without troubling Ivor Pandur in the Rangers goal.
Celtic emerged for the second half with more urgency, O’Neill turning to his bench for Kasper Høgh and later James Forrest in search of a spark to lift a front three that had offered little penetration. The introductions briefly stirred the home crowd, and Pandur was called into his most important contribution of the afternoon to deny Colby Donovan a clear sight of goal with a smart save. But the closest Celtic came to an equaliser arrived through an unlikely source at the other end of the pitch: with 15 minutes remaining, Rangers defender Olwethu Makhanya produced an exquisite improvised volley that beat Sinisalo only for the goal to be chalked off after a VAR review adjudged the defender to have used his hand to control the ball in the build-up — a let-off, in context, for a Celtic side who never mustered a serious equaliser of their own.
For all their possession and territorial spells, Celtic managed just one shot on target across the ninety minutes and a combined 0.71 expected goals from five attempts in total, against 15 shots and eight on target for the visitors — numbers that reflect a Rangers performance built on discipline and transition threat rather than sustained dominance. It was enough. Rangers held on comfortably enough in the closing stages, and McInnes’s side head into the international break on the back of a run that has snapped Celtic’s 13-game winning league streak — their longest heading into a top-flight Old Firm derby since March 2017 — and moved Rangers to within two points of the summit.
The result also confirmed a piece of history: Derek McInnes is now only the second Rangers manager to win both of his first two Old Firm derbies in charge in all competitions, after Graeme Souness in 1986. For a manager whose position had been quietly questioned after summer European exits to Jagiellonia Białystok and Jablonec, back-to-back wins over Celtic — sandwiching a home league win over St Mirren — represent about as emphatic an answer as McInnes could have given.
For Celtic, the damage extends beyond the two Old Firm defeats. O’Neill’s side had gone into the derby off the back of a 3-1 home defeat to Ferencvaros in their Europa League opener, and the manager had publicly insisted before kick-off that his squad’s confidence was “not rock bottom.” In front of 60,000 of their own supporters, that claim took what one report described as “another huge dent.” Three changes from the Ferencvaros defeat — Trusty, Luke McCowan and Nygren coming in for Forrest, Oliver Sorensen and Haissem Hassan — failed to arrest a growing pattern of Celtic looking short of both ideas and composure in the biggest fixtures, and O’Neill now faces mounting pressure with his side having lost consecutive derbies for the first time since he returned for a second spell in the Parkhead dugout.
The result leaves Celtic top of the Premiership on 18 points from seven games, with Rangers second on 16, as both sides break for internationals before returning to a title race that, after this result, looks considerably tighter than it did a fortnight ago.
