Derek McInnes Poised to Lead Rangers Against Celtic

While Scotland wrestles with World Cup fever, another story is quietly building into a storm back home. Derek McInnes, the man who dragged Hearts to the brink of a first title in 66 years, looks poised to walk into Ibrox and take on Celtic from the other side of Glasgow’s divide.

If it happens, it will be a seismic moment in a Scottish football year already full of them.

From Hearts’ heartbreak to Rangers’ hope

Barely a month has passed since Hearts were minutes from ending a title drought that stretched back to another era. McInnes had them organised, hard-edged, relentless. They led the way into the split, with Rangers one point behind and Celtic chasing.

Then came the collapse that wasn’t his.

It was Danny Rohl’s Rangers who buckled. Five “cup finals” left, as the manager called them. Four defeats. From a point off top to a distant third. The questions about Rangers’ mentality, which have echoed around Ibrox for the best part of a decade, grew louder again.

Now Rohl is set to head for RB Salzburg, and the door swings open for McInnes to return to the club he represented as a player from 1995 to 2000. A former Rangers midfielder, battle-hardened by years of chasing Brendan Rodgers’ Celtic with Aberdeen and then dragging Kilmarnock and Hearts beyond their financial weight, is suddenly the frontrunner to lead the challenge.

Tony Docherty, his long-time assistant and confidant, doesn’t hide what he thinks of the potential move.

“It’s a brilliant opportunity – if it presents itself,” he told the Scottish Football Podcast. “If it goes the way it looks as though it’s going to go, I think it’s the perfect fit for Rangers to be totally honest.”

Docherty knows him as well as anyone. The pair worked side by side for more than a decade at St Johnstone and Aberdeen. He has seen the version of McInnes that Rangers fans crave: the one who refuses to let a team fold.

“Derek is a hugely competitive person,” Docherty said. “You saw that last year, when people thought his team were going to disappear. Purely through him and the recruitment he did they were competitive right the way through.”

Mentality for a fragile club

That word keeps coming back: mentality.

Rangers have spent years being told they lack it. Too soft in big moments. Too brittle when pressure bites. Too often second best when it matters most.

Rory Loy, who wore the blue shirt himself, believes McInnes is exactly the sort of character to attack that weakness head-on. For him, Rohl’s departure and McInnes’ likely arrival is as good as it gets for the Ibrox hierarchy.

“To think three or four weeks ago, some Rangers fans – given the decline after the split – were looking to move him [Rohl] on,” Loy said on the same podcast. “To get money for him and to use that money to recruit Derek McInnes, I don’t think it could have fallen more favourably for Rangers.

“The one thing Derek McInnes will bring above all else is the one thing that’s been levelled at Rangers for the last decade – that’s what is between the ears, that’s mentality.”

McInnes has built a career on squeezing everything out of squads that, on paper, should not have been anywhere near the Old Firm. At Aberdeen, he kept running into Rodgers’ Celtic and kept finishing second. At Kilmarnock, he took Old Firm scalps and punched a modest budget into European football in his second season. At Hearts, he delivered the club’s best-ever points tally, only to watch Martin O’Neill’s Celtic wrench the title away in the dying minutes of the campaign.

He owns only two major honours as a manager – the League Cup with Aberdeen in 2014 and a Championship title with Kilmarnock – but his body of work is defined less by silverware and more by defiance against richer, deeper squads.

That is what Rangers want now: a team that doesn’t fold in April.

Loy is convinced that, under McInnes, last season’s title race would have gone the distance.

“I genuinely believe that if Derek McInnes was the Rangers manager going into the split, they don’t collapse,” he said. “They might not have won it – but I don’t think they collapse. They take it to the last day at the very least.”

O’Neill at Celtic, McInnes at Rangers?

Across the city, Celtic have already doubled down on their own heavyweight. Martin O’Neill has been confirmed as manager on the back of a league and Scottish Cup double, his team reeling off seven straight wins at the end of last season to snatch the title. A proven operator, a serial winner, a man who knows how to turn momentum into trophies.

That is the level McInnes would be walking into.

“His one issue may be is he’s coming up against a powerhouse when it comes to these things in Martin O’Neill,” Loy admitted. “He has a proven track record. To win seven on the bounce last year to win the title was unbelievable.

“And with Martin O’Neill in charge, he has a proven track record, I think it has all the ingredients for nip-and-tuck, last game of the season stuff.”

Docherty sees the same picture. For him, if the pieces fall as expected, Scottish football is about to get the kind of title race it has craved.

“If it does happen and Martin O’Neill is in place at Celtic and Derek McInnes is in place at Rangers it’s going to be one hell of a title race this year,” he said.

He also points to something that tends to get overlooked in the noise around trophies: survival at the top.

“Derek’s strength is his longevity. He’s been a manager for 18 years. For 15 years I was assistant to him. It’s incredible to have that longevity and that amount of success.”

Eighteen years in the dugout. Battles with Rodgers, now a looming duel with O’Neill. Hearts, Aberdeen, Kilmarnock – all dragged higher than their budgets suggested, all armed with that same hard edge.

If Rangers do make their move, they won’t just be hiring a former player with an affinity for Ibrox. They’ll be betting that, at last, they’ve found a manager whose personality can carry them through the months when their season usually unravels.

In a league braced for another Celtic charge under O’Neill, the question is simple: is Derek McInnes the man to make sure this one goes right to the wire?