‘Rangers flip narrative as McInnes makes mark’

“I like putting my name to this team at the minute,” Rangers manager Derek McInnes said after a second Old Firm derby win in a week.

That is hardly surprising, given the Rangers side that won 1-0 at Celtic Park in the league after last Sunday’s 3-0 win at Ibrox in the League Cup is starting to look like a team built in McInnes’ image.

A sluggish start to the campaign resulted in humiliating exits from the Europa League and Conference League and raised alarm bells among Rangers fans as they fell off the pace set by Celtic. The team looked completely lost.

Now, it is showing the hallmarks of its manager as they clinched a sixth straight victory and back-to-back derby triumphs to narrow the gap to Celtic to two points.

“Take it back a month when Derek McInnes was under real pressure,” former Rangers midfielder Andy Halliday said on BBC Scotland’s Sportsound.

“A big thing that was quite confusing to people is: ‘it doesn’t look like a Derek McInnes team’. They don’t look organised off the ball, they don’t look aggressive, they don’t look athletic.

“How that narrative has completely changed over the last three, four weeks. That for me is a Derek McInnes team, what we watched today.

“Front foot, aggressive, making contact with people, when they win the ball back playing forward, running forward and putting Celtic under constant pressure for large parts of the game.”