Shameful Derek McInnes breaks silence on leaving Rangers as Manager after embarrassing Europe exit
Derek McInnes is facing the first serious test of his young Rangers reign, with mounting external pressure following Thursday’s humiliating Conference League exit to Jablonec — though, as things stand, there’s no indication the manager himself has said anything about leaving the post, despite growing speculation over how long he can survive if results don’t improve fast.
The scale of the concern stems from a stark statistic: McInnes has won just two of his seven games in charge of Rangers since arriving from Hearts in the summer. For a club of Rangers’ size and expectation, that return — allied to a European exit that leaves them without continental football beyond August for the first time since 2017 — has been enough to turn a section of the support, and a number of high-profile former players, sharply against him within months of his appointment.
The Jablonec defeat itself has been singled out as a genuine low point. Rangers took a 1-0 lead into the second leg in the Czech Republic, only to be pegged back by a Vakhtang Tchanturishvili strike in the 73rd minute, forcing extra time and eventually a penalty shoot-out Rangers lost 4-3 after Findlay Curtis and James Penrice both missed from the spot.l
The reaction from Rangers alumni has been notably harsh. Former striker Kris Boyd delivered a blunt assessment of the performance, while ex-midfielder Andy Halliday went further, placing the Jablonec exit alongside some of the club’s most notorious European humiliations — Kaunas and Progres Niederkorn among them — and stating plainly that Jablonec, in his view no great side, were nonetheless the better team on the night. Halliday didn’t stop at critiquing the performance, adding a direct warning that McInnes’s job would come under threat as a result.
That sentiment has been echoed more broadly in Scottish football media, with multiple outlets reporting that patience among sections of the support is already wearing thin, barely two months into his tenure.
There’s an added layer of context to the criticism given McInnes’s own history with the two clubs at the center of this story. He spent nearly eight years as Aberdeen manager, leading the Dons to a League Cup win in 2013-14 that ended a 19-year trophy drought, and famously turned Rangers down twice during that spell — once in 2017 when the Ibrox club sought permission to speak to him directly, and earlier when he rejected interest from Sunderland. His Aberdeen tenure itself ended in 2021 following a poor run of results, with the club and manager mutually agreeing it was the right time for him to step down, despite McInnes saying at the time he’d hoped to see out the rest of that season.
That history — a manager once seen as too good for Rangers to ignore, who twice said no before eventually saying yes — adds an extra edge to the current scrutiny. Supporters who once wanted him at Ibrox during his Aberdeen pomp are now among those questioning whether the appointment has been the right one, this early into his time in charge.
Perhaps most striking is that speculation over potential replacements has already begun, despite no suggestion from the club itself that a change is imminent. Reports note that when previous manager Danny Rohl departed, Rangers’ ownership group under Andrew Cavenagh moved quickly to identify McInnes as their target — but that a section of the fanbase had been hoping instead to see former Rangers head coach Steven Gerrard installed. Gerrard is reported to have held talks with the club’s American owners after the exit of Russell Martin, Rohl’s predecessor, but felt the timing wasn’t right to return to Ibrox. With pressure now building on McInnes, some fans and commentators have begun raising Gerrard’s name again as a potential option if results don’t turn around.
The reporting is also clear that Cavenagh and the 49ers Enterprises ownership group have shown a willingness to move decisively on managerial appointments before, pointing to Russell Martin’s dismissal the previous season as evidence they won’t hesitate to act if they lose confidence in a manager.
For his part, McInnes’s own public comments since the Jablonec defeat have focused on accountability rather than any suggestion of stepping away. He described himself as mortified and embarrassed by the performance, explicitly taking personal responsibility for the result while acknowledging the scale of squad turnover — twelve new signings this summer, with more still arriving — as context rather than excuse. He was careful, in his own words, not to make any excuses whatsoever, while also cautioning that even a shoot-out win would only have “papered over the cracks” of a deeper performance issue.
Nothing in his own remarks points toward any consideration of walking away from the role. The pressure being described in the media at this stage is external — from supporters, pundits, and former players — rather than anything originating from McInnes himself.
With no European football to fall back on and a testing trip to Aberdeen — the club where he made his managerial name — up next, McInnes is under no illusions about the significance of the coming weeks. Given the financial backing already shown in the transfer market, including the pursuits of Kevin Kelsy and Kim Min-su, the expectation from ownership is likely to be a rapid response on the pitch. Whether that arrives, and whether it’s enough to quiet the growing chorus of doubt from Ibrox legends, will go a long way to determining how sustainable this current wave of pressure proves to be.
