Bojan Miovski's Late Winner Secures Rangers Victory Over St Mirren

Bojan Miovski waited all night for one moment. When it came, deep into stoppage time, he turned a flat, anxious evening at Ibrox into a roar that shook the place.

The Rangers substitute latched onto Ryan Naderi’s flick from Ivor Pandur’s booming clearance, steadied himself, and with the coolest touch of the game lifted a delicate dink over Zach Hemming Chapman to steal a 1-0 win over St Mirren in the Scottish Premiership.

A cute finish. A brutal outcome.

For 90 minutes, Derek McInnes’ side had huffed and pushed and probed, only to find a St Mirren team that refused to budge. Craig McLeish set his players up to be stubborn and brave, and they delivered both. They blocked, they pressed, they countered. They also carried the game’s best chance.

Rangers, missing injured captain and focal point Lawrence Shankland, turned to Naderi to lead the line. He worked, he linked, he chased. But they lacked a ruthless edge until Miovski appeared.

Rangers labour, Chapman shines

Rangers started with purpose and should have been ahead before the interval.

On 17 minutes, Nicolas Raskin burst into the box to meet a cross from Badredine Bouanani, his header directed firmly towards the corner. Chapman sprang to his right and clawed it away, the first sign that the St Mirren goalkeeper had come to Ibrox in inspired form.

Five minutes later, he underlined it. From the edge of the area, Mohamed Gassama drilled low and hard. Chapman got down smartly to parry. Bouanani pounced on the rebound, only to see the keeper back on his feet and in the way again. Two saves in a heartbeat, and Rangers’ early momentum stalled.

The longer it stayed goalless, the more the tension grew. The home side moved the ball with aggression, as McInnes later put it, but the final touch deserted them. Crosses flashed across the six-yard box, shots were smothered, angles closed.

St Mirren, though, were not just clinging on.

Taylor’s miss changes everything

On 66 minutes, the game swung. One ball, one run, one chance that should have silenced Ibrox.

Fraser Taylor broke clear, one-on-one with Pandur, with time to pick his spot. This was it – the moment to punish Rangers’ wastefulness. Taylor opened his body, went for precision rather than power, but his effort was too close to the goalkeeper. Pandur stood tall, saved comfortably, and the groan from the away end told its own story.

McLeish knew, even then, how costly that might be.

St Mirren continued to scrap, to close space, to look for counters. They had already emptied themselves across a punishing run of fixtures, four games in 12 days, but there was no sign of fatigue in their work-rate. They pressed like a side who believed they could take all three points, not just cling to one.

Rangers, for a spell, lost their way. McInnes admitted those 20 to 25 minutes of poor decisions frustrated him. Passes went astray, the crowd grew restless, and St Mirren’s confidence grew with every clearance.

Then came the change that mattered most.

Miovski delivers the killer touch

Miovski stepped off the bench with the game drifting towards stalemate. He did not see much of the ball. He did not need to.

Into stoppage time, Pandur launched long. Naderi rose, glanced it on, and suddenly Miovski was free, clear of the St Mirren back line and bearing down on Chapman. The keeper charged out to narrow the angle. The stadium held its breath.

Miovski did not rush. One touch to set, one touch to decide it. A calm, lifted finish over the advancing goalkeeper, the ball dropping into the net as Ibrox erupted.

For McInnes, it summed up the character he has been hammering into this group.

“I’m very relieved,” he said afterwards, pleased with the aggression, the movement, the perseverance. He talked about bad decisions in that ragged spell, but he kept coming back to one thing: this team finds a way.

Four wins from four in the league. Six from seven in all competitions. The performances, he admits, are not yet as complete or as comfortable as he wants. The results, though, keep stacking up.

Miovski, he added, trains with motivation, does the right things, and showed “a lovely, calm finish” when Rangers needed it most. That is exactly what this late cameo delivered.

St Mirren’s fury and pride

On the other side, McLeish walked away with a mix of anger at the result and pride in the performance.

“I was delighted with how we played,” he said, insisting his team “played like monsters” at Ibrox. Chapman’s saves, the defensive organisation, the bravery in possession – all of it fed into a display he felt merited at least a point.

He refused to lean on the schedule as an excuse. No talk of tired legs, just a sense that these nights, over a season, tend to even out. Taylor, he stressed, had been “fantastic” despite that glaring miss. The message to his squad was clear: keep playing like this, and the points will come.

He also delivered a sharp reminder of St Mirren’s reality. Their season, he said, cannot be defined by whether they nick a point away at Ibrox. They have already shown enough to suggest they will keep troubling teams across the division.

For now, though, they leave Glasgow with a second straight league defeat, following their 2-1 loss to Celtic, and the sting of knowing they had Rangers right where they wanted them.

Eyes on Celtic

Rangers’ win lifts them above St Mirren and into second place in the Scottish Premiership, momentum building at exactly the moment the fixture list sharpens.

Next up is a huge double-header against Celtic: first in the League Cup quarter-finals, then in the league at Parkhead. Two games that will test every claim McInnes has made about this team’s strength, fitness, and character.

They head into that storm with four straight league wins, a late hero, and a growing belief that they can grind out victories even on nights when fluency deserts them.

If this is what Rangers look like while still “making good steps,” as their manager put it, what will they become if those performances finally catch up with the results?