Ryan Naderi’s Turnaround: From Nearly Leaving Ibrox to Becoming Indispensable

A few months ago, Ryan Naderi looked like a player Rangers might be willing to let go. Today, he’s being singled out by pundits as one of the standout performers in Derek McInnes’ side. This is the story of that reversal, built from Ibrox News’ own reporting on the player, credited to Aheed Abrar and published on 24 September 2026, along with the wider context around his signing, his rivals for a starting spot, and the injuries that opened the door for him.

The turning point in how Naderi is discussed came from a comment by Gordon Dalziel on the Open Goal podcast. Discussing the striker on 24 September, Dalziel admitted that when he looked at Naderi at the start of the season, his honest expectation was that the club would probably move him on before too long. He then delivered the verdict that has since defined how the player is being talked about: Naderi, in his words, has been “absolutely dynamite.” That phrase has quickly attached itself to Naderi’s name in the daily coverage coming out of Ibrox, echoed in a separate roundup crediting Dalziel with calling him exactly that after a string of big performances, including against Celtic, turned him into a key figure for McInnes.

To understand why that verdict landed as such a surprise, you need the background on how shaky Naderi’s position looked only weeks earlier. He’s a 23-year-old, Germany-born striker who joined Rangers from Hansa Rostock. According to club squad records, the deal was completed in a winter transfer window for a reported fee of £4.7 million, on a contract running to 2029. A fee of that size should, in theory, have signalled confidence in the player from the club that signed him. Instead, his long-term standing came under real pressure once Derek McInnes took over as head coach and reshaped the squad around him. With Rangers making several additions to their attack over the summer, Naderi is reported to have felt surplus to requirements, a position that would unsettle any young forward, arriving at a big club only to watch the manager add more competition for his shirt before he’d had the chance to properly establish himself.

The scale of that competition is worth setting out. Rangers’ forward options going into the season included Djeidi Gassama, a Mauritanian winger signed for a reported £2.2 million, and Bojan Miovski, a North Macedonia international brought in from Girona for around £2.6 million, a fee that made him one of the pricier additions to the attack. On paper, that’s a well-stocked forward line, and it’s easy to see why a player like Naderi, arriving from a division and a club with a lower profile than Serie A or La Liga, might have expected to find himself down the pecking order rather than up it.

The reversal in his fortunes came about through a mixture of misfortune for others and genuine performance from Naderi himself. Rangers’ central attacking options were hit hard by injury as the season developed. Lawrence Shankland, signed as captain and first-choice striker, suffered a serious hamstring tear that ruled him out for an extended period, a recurrence of an injury he’d previously suffered at Hearts. Youssef Chermiti, another forward option, suffered a cruciate ligament injury that ended his involvement for the campaign entirely. Both players picked up what are described as long-term injuries, and neither was expected back for a considerable stretch. With two senior forwards sidelined, the door opened for whoever McInnes trusted to step into the gap, and it was Naderi, alongside young forward Kevin Kelsy, who took that opportunity.

Reporting on the current pecking order at the club makes clear just how far Naderi has come. Kelsy and Naderi are now described as McInnes’ preferred options ahead of Miovski, whose big-money arrival from Girona hasn’t translated into regular football. Miovski is said to continue struggling for game time at Ibrox, with speculation that he could look to leave the club altogether when the January transfer window opens. That’s a striking inversion of the situation Naderi found himself in only a matter of months earlier: the more expensively assembled forward is now the one whose Ibrox future is in doubt, while the player once thought likely to be quietly moved on has become first-choice.

The qualities being credited for that shift go well beyond simply being the man standing closest when the opportunity arose. Coverage of Naderi’s recent form highlights his energy, his work rate, his desire, and what’s described as a real penchant for scoring important goals, all qualities that have turned him into a genuine fan favourite in a short space of time. Those are the kind of attributes that tend to win supporters over quickly, often faster than raw statistics do, because they’re visible in every match: a striker who chases lost causes, presses relentlessly, and seems to want the ball in the moments that matter is the sort of player fans instinctively warm to, even before he’s built up a lengthy scoring record.

1. His performances against Celtic are singled out specifically as the standout moments in his rise. Rangers’ recent form against their fiercest rivals has been central to the club’s broader improvement under McInnes this season, and Naderi’s contribution in those fixtures appears to be a major reason his standing has changed so dramatically. Wider daily coverage from the same period underlines how significant those Celtic matches have been to the current mood at Ibrox, with Rangers’ 1-0 win over their rivals generating debate even among former referees about contentious decisions during the game. Other individual performers have also been credited with driving the club’s improvement across that period, including Dan Neil, James Penrice and Ivor Pandur, whose influence in midfield, at left-back and in goal respectively have all been highlighted separately. Naderi’s rise, in other words, has come as part of a broader upswing in form for the team, not as an isolated story.

The reporting also draws a specific tactical explanation for why McInnes values him so highly. Naderi is said to provide the athleticism the manager needs up front to pressure opposition defences, a quality that Kelsy and the other available centre-forwards can’t offer to the same degree on their own. That’s a meaningful distinction. It suggests McInnes isn’t simply picking Naderi because his rivals are injured or out of form, but because his specific attributes, energy and pressing intensity in particular, fill a tactical need the rest of the squad can’t replicate. On the strength of that, the same reporting goes as far as to suggest Naderi may now be the first name on the team sheet for McInnes going forward, a remarkable turnaround in status for a player who started the season looking like one of the more likely departures.

Shankland’s arrival at the club is described as having looked, at the time, like a direct threat to Naderi’s prospects, given the Scotland international’s reputation and the captaincy that came with the move. Instead, Naderi has become influential in his own right under McInnes even with Shankland in and around the squad, and his importance has only grown since Shankland’s injury forced him out of contention for the time being. It’s worth noting that Shankland remains part of the club’s leadership group and that McInnes will presumably want him to stay involved once he recovers, even if, as the reporting puts it, he isn’t guaranteed regular minutes in Govan when he returns. That’s a subtle signal about how quickly things could shift again once the club’s injury list clears. Naderi’s current status as a first-choice option is built partly on circumstance as well as form, and squad hierarchies in football are rarely fixed for long.

There’s also an international dimension to his story that adds further weight to the idea that this is a genuine breakthrough rather than a temporary uptick. Naderi’s displays are reported to have caught the attention of the Czech Republic’s national team set-up, with suggestions he could have already featured for that country if not for administrative complications described simply as “red tape.” The specifics of that situation, whatever eligibility rules or paperwork issues are involved, aren’t detailed in the reporting, so it would be speculation to go further than that. But the broader point stands: a player who looked likely to be quietly sold only months ago is now being talked about in the context of full international recognition, which is about as strong a marker of a genuine step forward as football offers a player.

Chermiti’s situation, by contrast, illustrates how differently things can go for a forward once injury strikes. It remains to be seen when he’ll be fit again, and the same reporting raises the possibility that Rangers could eventually decide to cash in on him next summer rather than wait for a longer recovery to play out. That’s a pointed contrast with Naderi’s trajectory: one young forward’s absence, through injury, has directly created the platform for another to establish himself, and the club now finds itself weighing very different futures for the two players within the same forward line.

It’s also worth placing Naderi’s story alongside a similar pattern already visible elsewhere in this Rangers squad. Centre-back Olwethu Makhanya’s rise followed a comparable arc, a player initially overlooked, in his case by his national team rather than his club, who forced his way into contention at Ibrox purely through performances rather than reputation or transfer fee. Naderi’s story runs on a near-identical track, except what he had to overcome wasn’t being underrated by an international coach but being squeezed out of his own club’s pecking order by a combination of a new manager and expensive new arrivals in the same position. Both cases point to the same underlying theme running through this Rangers season: McInnes appears to be building his side on current form rather than reputation, and several players who might have expected to coast on price tags or prior standing have instead had to earn their place, week to week, through what they actually produce on the pitch.

That also reflects well on the manager’s own decision-making. Taking over a squad that had finished a disappointing third the previous season, McInnes could easily have leaned entirely on his more expensive summer signings to solve an attacking problem once injuries struck. Instead, when Shankland and Chermiti went down, he turned to a striker whose long-term Ibrox future had been genuinely uncertain only weeks earlier, rather than restructuring the attack immediately around Miovski, the pricier option sitting on the sidelines. Based on the reporting, and on Dalziel’s comments in particular, that decision has paid off far more emphatically than anyone, including the pundit who publicly admitted his own low expectations, seemed to anticipate.

None of this means Naderi’s place is now guaranteed for the rest of the season. Both Shankland and Chermiti are described as long-term absentees rather than permanently unavailable, and when established, higher-profile forwards return to full fitness, competition for places at a club the size of Rangers will inevitably intensify again. Miovski’s situation is also one to watch closely, since a forward reportedly struggling for game time and possibly heading for a January exit represents exactly the kind of squad reshuffling that could still affect Naderi’s standing if McInnes eventually decides a different balance up front suits the team better. Squad hierarchies in football are rarely fixed, and a player who has gone from fringe figure to first name on the team sheet within a matter of weeks could, in theory, see that shift back the other way just as quickly if form dips or if rivals return in good shape.

For now, though, this is a straightforwardly positive story for both player and club. A forward whose Ibrox career looked like it might fade away quietly before it had really begun has instead become one of the names driving Rangers’ improved form this season, with a respected Scottish pundit publicly conceding that he expected the opposite outcome entirely. Whether that trajectory continues through the rest of the campaign, and whether it eventually leads to full international recognition with the Czech Republic, are questions only further performances will settle. What’s already clear from the reporting is that Ryan Naderi has given Derek McInnes exactly the kind of selection headache a manager wants: the kind created by a player nobody expected much from making himself genuinely impossible to leave out.