Ibrox View: 5/10 average as trio all shine in win – Rangers player ratings vs St Johnstone
Rangers needed a reaction after the draw at Dundee, and they got a thorough one. A 4-0 win over St Johnstone at a rain-lashed Ibrox, played in the teeth of Storm Boelo (I had it as Austen in my preview, which was wrong), moved Derek McInnes’s side to within one point of Celtic, who visit Hibs on Sunday. It was not a perfect performance, and the first half in particular was uneven, but the quality of the second half and the sharpness of the front players left little doubt about the result. The ratings below are my own, built from the match reports and the available statistics, so they will not match any published set exactly. I also couldn’t confirm the full starting eleven, so I have rated the players whose involvement the reports describe and covered the rest of the side in general terms.
Start with the man of the match, and it is not a close call. Minsu Kim, redeployed on the left after a difficult spell in a central role, was at the heart of nearly everything good that Rangers did. He was involved in all three of the goals that came before he was substituted, and the reports describe a performance of real authority. His through ball for the opening goal was the kind of pass that separates a good winger from a very good one, slicing open a compact defence and releasing a teammate with a clear sight of goal. He also hit the outside of the post with a long-range effort, and his shot led directly to Ryan Naderi’s goal when the visiting goalkeeper could only parry it. Kim gets a 9/10 from me, and he looked like a player who had found his place.
The significance of that perfrmance goes beyond the numbers. Kim arrived this summer for around £8.5 million and spent his first few weeks without a goal or an assist, which prompted exactly the kind of impatient commentary that a young signing often attracts. His critics said he was not delivering, that the fee was too high and that his role was unclear. On Saturday, he answered all three points in ninety minutes. The question of how best to use him, which I raised when discussing his early weeks, may have been settled by McInnes moving him to the left, where he can run at defenders, cut inside and play the final pass. A winger who creates three goals is doing his job, whatever the scorers’ column says.
Kevin Kelsy was the other star, and he too gets a 9/10. The striker, restored to the team after being left on the bench at Dens Park, scored twice and could easily have had more. His first goal came just before half-time, when a pass from Kim found Naderi, who squared the ball for Kelsy to finish into an empty net, and his second was a back-post effort that turned in a flick-on from Emmanuel Fernandez after a corner. The Scotsman noted that he is the first Rangers striker since Jermain Defoe in 2019 to score four goals in his first five appearances, which puts his early form in a historic context. He also forced a fine save from the visiting goalkeeper with a curling effort in the first half.
What stood out about Kelsy’s display was how much better the team looked with him in it. The argument that I and others made before the match, that a physical striker would be the right choice against a compact defence, was borne out by what happened on the pitch. He held the ball up, attacked crosses and gave Naderi the freedom to roam, and the partnership between the two looked far more balanced than the combination tried at Dundee. The WhoScored-based ratings reached the same conclusion, giving him 9.0 and saying that Rangers look more dangerous with him in the team. That is a verdict that McInnes will be hard pressed to ignore when he picks his side for the next match.
Naderi completes the trio that deserves the highest marks, with an 8/10. The Dutch-born striker did not score as often as his partner, but his contribution was just as important. He was the player who laid the ball off for Kelsy’s opener, choosing the unselfish option when a shot was available, and he scored himself after Kim’s effort was parried, popping up in the right place at the right time. That is the kind of instinct that has made him one of the most productive members of the squad, with a record of goals this season that is rare for a player who has not always started. The numbers suggest that he benefits from having a partner alongside him, and Saturday showed the point clearly.
Together, these three produced the bulk of the damage, and that is the reason the headline you gave me mentions a trio. Their combined contribution was the difference between the sides, and it came from a mixture of creativity, finishing and intelligent movement. A front line that links up like that is difficult for any defence to handle, and St Johnstone, who had been so well organised in recent weeks, were repeatedly pulled apart. It is worth remembering how much of this had been missing at Dens Park, where Rangers dominated possession but struggled to create clear chances. The change in shape and personnel made all the difference.
Badredine Bouanani earns a 7/10. The Algerian winger kept going all afternoon, and he combined well with Kim in the early stages. The Scotsman reports that neat play between Kim and Bouanani released the winger through on goal in the opening quarter of the game, but he squeezed his shot wide. That miss would have given Rangers the lead and would have eased the nerves in a crowd that was anxious after the Dundee draw. Beyond that, he was an active, dangerous presence, stretching the visiting defence and making space for others. A goal would have lifted his mark, and it would have made a good performance a very good one.
Nicolas Raskin gets a 7/10 as well. The midfielder, who has been at the centre of so much transfer speculation, was involved in the game in several ways. He won the ball high up the pitch before setting Kim away for the shot that led to Naderi’s goal, and he was fouled by a high challenge from Kai Fotheringham that earned the St Johnstone midfielder a red card after a VAR review. Raskin also had to deal with a difficult moment in the first half, when a short pass from his goalkeeper put him under pressure and gave possession away in a dangerous position. That was not his fault, but it was one of the few anxious moments for the home side. His overall display was controlled and effective, though without the long-range spectacle that marked his goal at Dundee.
Then there is the question of the goalkeeper, which brings us to the lowest rating of the afternoon. Ivor Pandur gets a 5/10, and the reasoning is simple. A misplaced goal kick just before the half-hour mark drew harsh words from sections of a nervous home crowd, and the reports note that a short pass in the first half put Raskin under pressure and allowed St Johnstone to win possession in a dangerous position. Those were the kind of avoidable errors that cost Rangers dearly at Dundee, and they could have been punished by a team with more attacking threat. Pandur did make one good save, tipping a long-range strike from Reece McAlear over the bar, but it was not enough to lift the mark. It was a quiet, slightly anxious afternoon for a player who has been generally reliable.
That is the sort of rating that a team winning 4-0 can afford to hand out without too much concern. Rangers kept a clean sheet, the visitors created very little and the errors did not lead to a goal. But it is worth noting, because the issue of concentration was the main theme of the Dundee post-mortem, and McInnes will want his players to be sharp from back to front. A goalkeeper who is asked to play out from the back needs to be calm and accurate, and the margin for error is small when the opposition is pressing. There is no reason to think that Pandur cannot correct the problem, but it is a point that the coaching staff will probably raise.
Emmanuel Fernandez deserves a 7/10, and the reason is a specific one. The defender was caught out of position for both Dundee goals a week earlier, and there was speculation that McInnes might drop him. Instead he started, and he made a significant contribution, flicking on Kim’s corner for Kelsy’s second goal. That is the kind of redemption that a defender will welcome, particularly after a difficult week, and it shows that the manager’s faith in him was not misplaced. I do not have the full detail of his defensive work, and I cannot rate the rest of the back line individually, but the clean sheet suggests that the unit as a whole was solid and well organised.
The substitutes made an impact too. Djeidi Gassama gets a 7/10 for his role in the fourth goal, a brilliant run down the left that created the opening for his teammate. The reports say Gassama set up fellow substitute Tochi Chukwuani, who added to the scoreline with a well-placed effort in the closing moments. Chukwuani himself earns a 7/10 for his finish, which was a small moment of vindication for a player who had been criticised as a signing and who had played only a handful of league minutes this season. I wrote this week that it was premature to write him off, and the goal was a good reminder of why. One finish does not change the picture, but it gives the midfielder something to build on.
It is worth thinking about what the result means in the context of the title race. Rangers were four points behind Celtic before kick-off, and the win has reduced the gap to a single point. Celtic travel to Edinburgh on Sunday to face Hibs, so the margin could change again within a day, but the immediate effect is to keep the pressure on the leaders and to restore the sense of momentum that was broken at Dens Park. Opta’s supercomputer gave Rangers a 22.92 per cent chance of winning the league earlier in the week, and that figure will almost certainly rise after a convincing victory. The numbers are only a guide, but they reflect a genuine shift in the balance of the race.
The performance also validated several of the selection decisions that McInnes made. He restored Kelsy to the starting eleven, moved Kim to the left and kept faith with Raskin and Fernandez. Each of those choices paid off, and together they produced the most complete display for several weeks. The manager has been criticised at various points this season for his team selection, particularly when the team has dropped points, but on Saturday he got it right. That is the nature of management, and the test is whether he can maintain the standard. A busy week lies ahead, with three matches in seven days, and the squad will need to be rotated carefully.
There were some caveats, and a fair set of ratings should record them. St Johnstone were a limited opponent, and they reduced themselves to ten men with a clumsy challenge when the game was already slipping away. Rangers were not at their best in the first half, with several missed chances and a spell of nervousness that allowed the visitors to stay in the match. The storm made conditions difficult, which may have favoured the home side, who were more comfortable on the ball. And the opposition’s early organisation meant that the first goal was a long time coming. None of that takes away from the quality of the finishing, but it does suggest that the performance was good rather than outstanding.
Still, a 4-0 win is a 4-0 win, and the manner of it will have pleased McInnes. The front players combined well, the defence kept a clean sheet and the substitutes made a difference. For a team that had been criticised for lacking a cutting edge, it was a timely reminder of what it can do when everything clicks. The goals came from a mixture of passing, movement and set pieces, which is exactly the variety that a title-chasing side needs. If Rangers can reproduce that kind of performance regularly, they will be difficult to stop.
In the end, the ratings tell a simple story. Three players, Kim, Kelsy and Naderi, were outstanding, and several others contributed solidly. One, the goalkeeper, had an anxious afternoon. The average across the team, by my reckoning, would be comfortably above the five out of ten that the headline suggests, which presumably refers to one individual’s mark rather than the whole side. What matters more is the direction of travel. A team that bounced back from a frustrating draw with a comprehensive win, and that moved to within a point of the leaders, has every reason to feel optimistic about the weeks ahea
