Bojan Miovski's Late Goal Saves Rangers From Defeat
Four minutes left and Ibrox was already emptying. Not in numbers that would make the headlines, but in mood. The groans had turned to boos, the early leavers were halfway up the stairs, and the story of Rangers’ afternoon looked set: flat, wasteful, and drifting seven points behind Celtic before September had even found its rhythm.
Then Bojan Miovski changed everything.
The forward, nudged down the pecking order and seemingly halfway out the door a fortnight ago, slipped in with a neat, composed finish as the match tipped into stoppage time. One clean strike, and the noise inside Ibrox flipped from mutiny to mayhem.
For four long minutes, it felt like a cup final.
Players sprinted to the corner. Staff leapt from the bench. The roar was not about a 1-0 home win over St Mirren in isolation; it was about what that goal stopped Rangers from becoming this week – a club already staring at a sizeable gap to Celtic, already fending off questions about Derek McInnes’ direction.
Instead, they clung on. St Mirren, who had grown into the game and enjoyed their own spell of control in the second half, could not find a reply. The whistle went, and those who had stayed to the end exhaled as one.
A season hanging on a single swing of the boot
The significance of Miovski’s strike runs far deeper than three points.
Celtic’s 1-0 win away to St Johnstone kept the champions perfect in the league. Had Rangers stumbled, they would have been seven points adrift after just six games. That kind of early gap doesn’t end a title race, but it warps the pressure around every fixture, every team talk, every mistake.
Instead, McInnes’ side remain in touch and head into a defining fortnight with something more valuable than any tactical tweak: a sense that they can still find a way, even on a day when they lose their way.
They now roll into a Premier Sports Cup quarter-final against Martin O’Neill’s Celtic on Sunday, then a Premiership trip to Celtic Park the following weekend, with a run that looks good on paper. Unbeaten in five at home. Four straight wins since that damaging defeat by Hibernian. Six victories from their last seven matches overall.
“If you strip it back, six wins out of seven, four straight wins,” McInnes could justifiably point out. “We have not lost a goal apart from an own goal.”
Strip it back, though, and something else emerges. Since hammering holders St Mirren 5-1 in the League Cup at Ibrox a month ago, every win has been by a single goal. The swagger of that night has given way to something more anxious, more laboured. McInnes knows this is still a team under construction.
From battering to hanging on
For an hour, Rangers looked like they might spare themselves the late drama.
“I thought the performance for the first hour was really strong, particularly the first half, where we absolutely battered St Mirren,” McInnes told BBC Scotland.
He was right. The aggression was there. The intensity was there. The chances were there. St Mirren spent long stretches pinned in, forced to ride out wave after wave of attacks.
Former Rangers midfielder Andy Halliday saw the same thing.
“I thought in the first half Rangers were really good,” he said on BBC Radio Scotland’s Sportsound. “They have shown a vast improvement off the ball over the last three or four games.
“They played with a lot of aggression, a lot of intensity and they've created an abundance of chances in the first half as well, but they just don't seem to have that ruthlessness in the top end of the pitch.”
That missing ruthlessness turned what should have been a comfortable afternoon into a fraught one. At 0-0, all that pressure meant nothing on the scoreboard, and McInnes knew the danger.
“At 0-0, as an opposition manager, when you've been put through the ringer and you know you haven't been punished for it, it does give you power and belief that you can get something from it.”
St Mirren sensed it. The visitors stepped up after the break, taking advantage of Rangers’ slackness in possession and their growing impatience.
“I thought St Mirren had much more than a 20-minute period,” Halliday argued. “Rangers just lost all control and got a bit desperate.
“They got a wee bit too forceful too early, but take nothing away from them – the forcefulness worked in the end with the direct ball getting them the goal.”
McInnes accepted his side had dipped.
“They played with a bit more belief and came after us and we were guilty of so many poor decisions,” he admitted. “There are obviously loads we have to improve on, but we have to meanwhile keep winning and we have to keep improving if we are to achieve anything this season.”
The tension in that sentence – keep winning while still learning how to win properly – sums up Rangers right now.
Injuries, improvisation and an unlikely hero
Up front, the picture has been brutally complicated.
Long-term injuries to Youssef Chermiti and summer signing Lawrence Shankland have ripped out McInnes’ first-choice strike options. The news that Daisuke Yokota, the Japanese winger only recently through the door, now needs groin surgery adds another layer of frustration to an already stretched attack.
Into that mess stepped Miovski, a player who had slipped to fifth choice and looked destined for the exit during the transfer window.
“It just shows you what football is like and how quickly it can change,” Halliday said. “It looked like he was out of the picture two or three weeks ago and it looked like he was going to be on his way in the transfer window, but he's come up with a massive goal.”
McInnes has so far leaned on Ryan Naderi and Kevin Kelsy, the big-money arrival from Portland Timbers. Miovski has had to wait and watch, his status sliding as new faces arrived.
“It is just typical of football that a few weeks ago Bojan would have seemed so far out of it,” McInnes said.
“But, when you actually strip it back, his goals per minutes in the Premiership is up there with Lawrence Shankland.
“So I was delighted when I inherited someone like Bojan who knows his way about the Scottish Premiership and is a goalscorer and, played in the right manner and with the right partner, is capable of scoring goals.”
Halliday does not expect Miovski to suddenly start against Celtic, but even he admits the landscape has shifted.
“He's certainly more in the picture after a goal like that.”
Wild scenes, real questions
McInnes made no apology for the celebrations.
“Last-minute winners are great for players, coaches and fans,” he said. “We'd rather not be in that position, but credit to the players for keeping going.”
He’s right. You cannot fake the release that ripped through Ibrox when the ball hit the net. For a support that had already tasted early-season disappointment in Europe and at home to Hibernian, this was a reminder that late drama can still fall their way.
But the noise, the relief, the wild scenes – they all sit alongside a more sober reality. Rangers are grinding, not gliding. They are edging games they once would have put away early. They are still searching for a settled, clinical front line. And they are about to walk into back-to-back meetings with a Celtic side that has yet to drop a point in the league.
Miovski’s goal bought them breathing space. It kept the gap manageable. It kept the questions from turning into a full-blown inquest.
Now comes the real test: was that moment the spark that ignites their season, or just a dramatic pause before the scrutiny returns with even greater force?
