I TOLD BOJAN MIOVSKI TO RETURN THE MAN OF THE MATCH AWARD!” 😱🔥 WHO IS THIS AMAZING PLAYER? 👀 According to the claim, he deserved the award even more after his outstanding performance!

Bojan Miovski was confirmed as the official man of the match after his dramatic stoppage-time winner secured a hard-fought 1-0 victory over St Mirren at Ibrox, a result that moved Derek McInnes’ side up to second place in the Scottish Premiership table and extended their winning run to four consecutive matches across all competitions. The North Macedonian striker, introduced from the bench in place of Djeidi Gassama, latched onto a flicked header from fellow substitute-turned-difference-maker Ryan Naderi and coolly lobbed the ball over St Mirren goalkeeper Jacob Chapman in the ninetieth minute, sparking wild celebrations around Ibrox and providing the perfect punctuation mark to a night that had, for long stretches, threatened to end in considerable frustration for the home support.

The victory carries added significance given the identity of Rangers’ closest rivals in the table. Celtic also won on the same evening against St Johnstone, meaning the gap at the top would have widened further still had McInnes’ side failed to find a winner against a stubborn and well-drilled St Mirren outfit. Moving above both Hearts and Motherwell into second spot represents a tangible marker of progress for a Rangers side that endured a genuinely alarming start to the season under its new manager, and while the performance itself was littered with the kind of imperfections that have characterised much of Rangers’ campaign so far, three points banked in this manner will do far more for confidence and momentum heading into Sunday’s Old Firm cup quarter-final than any amount of positive rhetoric from the dugout.

McInnes made three changes to the side that had beaten Motherwell 1-0 in the previous fixture, with deadline-day signings Badredine Bouanani and Kevin Kelsy both handed their first starts for the club, while Ryan Naderi was also brought into the starting eleven. Lawrence Shankland’s enforced absence through a hamstring injury, along with Findlay Curtis and Kim Min-su, meant those places in the side were up for grabs, and the manner in which several of those given the opportunity responded went a long way toward shaping how the individual performances were assessed across the various post-match ratings that emerged from the press box.

Ivor Pandur was handed a rating of six for his evening’s work between the posts, a fair reflection of a performance that combined the occasional shaky moment with the kind of decisive, match-defining contribution that ultimately proved worth far more than any clean sheet statistic could capture. The Croatian goalkeeper produced a vital block to deny Fraser Taylor when the St Mirren midfielder burst clear of the Rangers defence in the 65th minute, and followed that up with a smart save to keep out Nikolas Agrafiotis’s effort on the turn shortly afterward, two interventions that kept Rangers on level terms during the period of the match when St Mirren looked most likely to snatch the opening goal. It was, however, his contribution at the other end of the pitch that will live longest in the memory, with his pinpoint long ball forward providing the platform from which Naderi and Miovski combined to produce the winning goal, a reminder of how valuable a goalkeeper comfortable with the ball at his feet can be to a team searching for a breakthrough deep into stoppage time.

In front of him, Dujon Sterling continued his encouraging recent form with a rating of seven, the right-back having spoken earlier in the week about enjoying his healthiest run of fitness since arriving at the club more than three years ago, and his performance against St Mirren reflected that growing physical assurance. Emmanuel Fernandez and Olwethu Makhanya were both handed ratings of six at the heart of the Rangers defence, solid if unspectacular showings against a St Mirren front line that caused periodic problems without ever fully exposing the home side’s back line, while James Penrice, deployed at left-back, was rated the same as his central defensive colleagues, offering steady if similarly unremarkable service down the left side of the pitch.

Central midfield produced a mixed set of individual reviews. Dan Neil, who had been widely praised for one of his best performances in a Rangers shirt during the previous win over Motherwell, was handed a more modest rating of five this time around, a dip in influence that reflected a broader truth about Wednesday’s contest: Rangers dominated territory and possession for large periods without ever really imposing themselves with the fluency that had characterised their recent victories. Alongside him, Nicolas Raskin was rated more favourably with a seven, continuing to look like one of the first names on McInnes’ team sheet regardless of the changes taking place around him elsewhere in the side, before being replaced by Cameron Devlin in the 78th minute as the manager looked to manage his star midfielder’s minutes with the Old Firm derby now just days away.

It was further forward, however, where the most eye-catching individual contributions of the night were to be found, and where the real story of Rangers’ evening ultimately took shape. Badredine Bouanani, making his first start for the club after arriving on loan from Stuttgart on deadline day, was the standout performer across the entire Rangers side according to the post-match ratings, earning an impressive eight out of ten for a display that gave Ibrox its first real glimpse of what the Algerian winger can offer in the final third. Bouanani looked lively and dangerous throughout his hour on the pitch before making way for Curtis, consistently threatening to unlock a stubborn St Mirren defence with his direct running and unpredictable movement, and his performance will have done plenty to justify the excitement that had built around his arrival in the final hours of the transfer window.

By contrast, Kevin Kelsy’s full debut proved to be a considerably more difficult evening, the Venezuelan forward earning a rating of just five before being withdrawn in the 60th minute for Minsu Kim. Given the scale of investment and expectation that has accompanied his nine-million-pound-plus arrival from Portland Timbers, it was perhaps inevitable that Kelsy’s first extended runout would be judged against a demanding standard, and while there was little disgrace in a quiet full debut against unfamiliar opposition in an unfamiliar league, the early signs suggest the striker will need time to adjust to the physical and tactical demands of Scottish football before he begins to justify his price tag on a consistent basis. Djeidi Gassama, who had been directly involved in the buildup to several of Rangers’ better moments earlier in the season, was also rated at five before being replaced by the match-winning Miovski, while Ryan Naderi, whose flicked header proved instrumental in the winning goal, received a rating of six that arguably understates the value of his contribution to the only goal of the game.

That brings the assessment back, inevitably, to Miovski himself, whose stoppage-time introduction and subsequent match-winning intervention overshadowed every other individual storyline from the contest, official man-of-the-match honours and all. Down the pecking order among Rangers’ attacking options for much of the season, the North Macedonian international has now scored the winning goal in one of the club’s most important victories of the campaign so far, doing so with a moment of real technical composure under intense pressure that few players on the pitch would have been capable of executing. His finish, lofting the ball delicately over the advancing Chapman after racing onto Naderi’s flick, required the kind of ice-cool decision-making that separates genuine impact substitutes from players who simply occupy space on the bench, and McInnes will take enormous encouragement from having a player of Miovski’s calibre available to call upon when games are there to be won in the closing stages.

The broader context of this result adds further weight to just how important Miovski’s intervention proved to be. Rangers had huffed and puffed for large periods of the match without finding the breakthrough their overall control of territory arguably merited, and there was a growing sense of unease spreading around Ibrox as St Mirren continued to look the more threatening side in the second half, with Declan John’s effort crashing agonisingly past the far post in the 80th minute standing as the closest either side had come to breaking the deadlock up to that point. Had that chance fallen the other way, or had Rangers failed to find their own moment of quality in the dying embers of the match, the entire narrative around this fixture, and quite possibly around McInnes’ broader project at Ibrox, could look very different heading into the international break and the daunting week of fixtures that follows.

Instead, McInnes returned to the Ibrox touchline following his two-match touchline suspension to witness his side extend their winning run to four matches and climb to second in the table, a joint achievement that will have done wonders for confidence within the camp ahead of Sunday’s Premier Sports Cup quarter-final meeting with Celtic at Ibrox, followed by a league fixture at Celtic Park the following week. Both matches will be played out without away supporters present following an SPFL statement on crowd safety, adding an unusual dynamic to what remain two of the most significant fixtures of Rangers’ season to date, fixtures that will go a long way toward determining whether the modest but meaningful momentum generated by this run of four consecutive wins can be sustained against the sternest possible opposition.

There is also a squad-management subplot worth considering when reflecting on how Wednesday night’s individual performances might shape team selection for the derby fixtures ahead. Bouanani’s eye-catching full debut will surely have done enough to secure his involvement against Celtic, while Miovski’s decisive impact from the bench presents McInnes with a genuine dilemma about whether to reward the striker with more regular game time given his proven ability to deliver in the biggest moments. Kelsy’s quieter full debut, meanwhile, offers a reminder that expensive signings do not always settle immediately into a new league and a new football culture, and McInnes will need to balance patience with pragmatism as he decides how quickly to reintroduce his record signing into the starting picture for fixtures of such magnitude.

For a Rangers side that had endured such a difficult opening stretch to the season, culminating in a mortifying Europa League qualifying exit at the hands of Jagiellonia Białystok, the ability to grind out results in this fashion, via a combination of defensive resilience, goalkeeping quality, and late-game substitute magic, represents exactly the kind of character McInnes has spoken about wanting to instil in his group since those darker early weeks of his tenure. Individual performances may not always have hit the heights supporters have come to expect at a club of Rangers’ stature, reflected in the relatively modest ratings handed out to several key contributors on Wednesday night, but the collective outcome, four wins on the bounce and a climb to second in the table, tells its own more encouraging story about the direction the team is currently heading.

St Mirren, for their part, will have genuine cause for frustration at leaving Ibrox with nothing to show for a performance that gave Rangers considerable problems for long periods of the contest, particularly during that second-half spell when Taylor and Agrafiotis both went close to giving the visitors a deserved lead. Craig McLeish’s side continue to look like one of the more competitive outfits outside the traditional top tier of Scottish football this season, and the manner of this narrow defeat, conceding deep into stoppage time having largely nullified the home side’s attacking threats for the majority of the second half, will offer plenty of encouragement for their own prospects as the season progresses, even if the result itself proved agonisingly one-sided in the closing seconds.

As Rangers now turn their full attention toward the visit of Celtic on Sunday, the individual and collective lessons from this narrow win over St Mirren will feed directly into how McInnes approaches team selection for the biggest fixture of his short tenure so far. Bouanani’s bright emergence, Miovski’s match-winning composure, Pandur’s timely quality both in and out of possession, and the more mixed showings from Kelsy and others further forward all provide genuine food for thought as the manager finalises his plans for a derby that could define the entire complexion of Rangers’ season depending on the outcome. What is beyond dispute, however, is that four consecutive victories and a place in the Scottish Premiership’s top two represent tangible, meaningful progress for a club and a manager who, only a matter of weeks ago, appeared to be staring down the barrel of a genuine early-season crisis.