Old Firm Showdown: Rangers vs Celtic in League Cup Quarter-Final

The first Old Firm of the season arrives with something tangible on the line. Not points. A place at Hampden.

Rangers host Celtic at a full Ibrox on Sunday in a League Cup quarter-final that feels far bigger than its billing, with a Premiership meeting at Celtic Park looming just seven days later. The city gets two derbies in a week. The first one could set the tone for everything that follows.

Celtic come in perfect in the league, six wins from six. Rangers needed time to find their stride but have strung together four straight victories after a sluggish start. Form, though, has a habit of dissolving in this fixture. What doesn’t is the weight of the occasion – and the pressure attached to it.

Rangers have not lifted a trophy since 2024. Celtic, for all their domestic dominance last season, left this particular cup behind. Both clubs see this as a chance to make an early statement in a campaign that already feels unforgiving.

McInnes steps into the cauldron

For Derek McInnes, this is not just another big game. It is his first Old Firm in the Rangers dugout.

The last time he stared across at Martin O’Neill, it ended in agony. As Hearts head coach on the final day of last season, he lost a Premiership title decider to Celtic in what turned out to be his final match in charge at Tynecastle. That kind of defeat lingers.

McInnes, 55, is no stranger to Celtic. He has faced them 61 times as a manager and beaten them 10. He has lived the Old Firm as a player, winning in his only appearance in the fixture in Rangers colours. But this is different. This is his first taste of it from the home technical area at Ibrox, with 50,000 people demanding a response and a trophy run.

O’Neill, by contrast, knows this landscape inside out. The Northern Irishman has led Celtic into 28 matches against Rangers and won 16 of them. He understands the rhythms of this derby, the surges and setbacks, the way a single moment can flip the whole afternoon.

McInnes framed it simply.

“We’ve got to bring the crowd with us,” he said. He knows Rangers will not dominate for 90 minutes. He expects spells of control, spells of suffering. The key, in his eyes, is to feed off the noise rather than fear it – and to give that noise something to cling to by taking chances when they come.

Rangers’ striker puzzle

The Rangers manager’s biggest headache sits at the top of the pitch. Captain Lawrence Shankland is out. So is Youssef Chermiti. The focal point of the attack is up for grabs.

Ryan Naderi has made his case. He kept his place for the midweek win over St Mirren after coming off the bench to score the winner against Motherwell when Shankland went down injured. He led the line for 90 minutes, worked, battled, occupied defenders. Yet it was his replacement, Bojan Miovski, who came on and grabbed the only goal.

That late strike from the former Aberdeen forward has pushed him into the conversation. Does McInnes reward Naderi’s graft and recent trust, or does he lean into Miovski’s knack for decisive moments and hand him a start in the most intense environment of all?

Then there is Kevin Kelsy. The £9m deadline-day signing from Portland Timbers made his first start in midweek. The fee alone demands attention. The goals have not arrived yet in a Rangers shirt. Throwing him into an Old Firm could be seen as a gamble – or the perfect stage for a statement debut.

McInnes needs more than just a body up front. He needs someone who can turn half-chances into something, someone who can “capitalise on good play and good opportunities”, as he put it, after watching his side pass up openings in back-to-back 1-0 wins.

He knows what an early goal would do. It would ignite the stands. It would turn Ibrox from loud to feral. “If we can get ourselves in front, give the crowd something to get behind, then I think the strength of our club can be shown,” he said. That’s the plan. The selection up front will shape how they try to execute it.

Celtic’s rotation and big calls

O’Neill arrives at Ibrox with his own decisions to make, but from a position of strength.

He rotated heavily in midweek at St Johnstone, making five changes and resting several key players with this game in mind. Celtic still won. The squad depth did its job. Now the main actors are expected to return.

Camilo Duran is one of them. Six goals already this season, and missed in Perth by his manager’s own admission. He came off the bench there, replacing Haissem Hassan and operating from the right while Kasper Hogh, back from injury, led the line through the middle.

That leaves O’Neill with an intriguing choice. Does he restore Duran centrally and sacrifice Hogh? Or does he find a way to fit both into the same XI at Ibrox, pushing one wide to keep all that firepower on the pitch?

At the back, Cameron Carter-Vickers sat out the St Johnstone win entirely after starting every game so far this season. Dane Murray stepped in and delivered a composed performance. He did not look out of place. But this is Ibrox. This is Celtic’s most experienced defender, fully rested, waiting in the wings. It would be a surprise if Carter-Vickers did not return, yet Murray has at least given his manager something to ponder.

The goalkeeping situation has also been nudged open. Wolves loanee Sam Johnstone started ahead of regular No 1 Viljami Sinisalo in Perth and produced a key save at 0-0 on the way to a clean sheet. He handled everything asked of him.

Does that one outing in a quieter setting earn him the gloves in the firestorm of Ibrox? Or does O’Neill revert to the established order for a game of this magnitude? The England international’s performance has made the question harder to ignore.

Ibrox, but only half an Old Firm

The stadium will be full. The rivalry will be raw. But one of the defining features of this Old Firm era will be missing again: away fans.

Only Rangers supporters will be inside the 50,000-capacity ground for this League Cup quarter-final, after the authorities intervened amid the ongoing ticket allocation dispute between the clubs. The previous agreement, which promised five per cent of tickets to away fans for all SPFL fixtures at both Ibrox and Celtic Park, has been shelved.

The flashpoints after the Scottish Cup tie in March, and the independent review that followed, pushed both clubs back from that arrangement. The result is a derby played in a one-colour wall of noise.

Celtic know this landscape too. They have come to Govan before without a single away fan and still found a way to win. That experience tempers some of the anxiety among the Parkhead support, even if many still bristle at the idea of one of world football’s great rivalries being played in such a lopsided atmosphere.

O’Neill admitted it will feel strange. “It’ll be strange in many aspects not to have any away fans in our area,” he said. “I always felt as if it would give you a crumb of comfort.” That crumb is gone. The challenge remains the same.

He revealed police had visited Celtic’s camp for a short meeting this week, a 15-minute reminder about behaviour and responsibilities on a day when emotions tend to spill over. He welcomed it. “Gosh, it’d be nice to have something to celebrate,” he added, knowing that the line between jubilation and trouble can be thin in this fixture.

Atmosphere, edge and what’s at stake

McInnes wants the crowd aggressive, loud, relentless – but on his players’ side. “Have their backs, not be on their backs,” he said. He believes if Rangers can “utilise” the 50,000 inside Ibrox and match that noise with the right level of performance, they will be “difficult to stop”.

O’Neill has lived through the extremes. He recalled a league game at Ibrox when Celtic fell 2-0 down early and the place shook with noise, “probably as loud as it’s ever been”, only for his side to claw their way back and turn the mood. He knows how quickly the atmosphere can flip, how fragile even the most intimidating roar can be if the team feeding it loses control.

He expects the intensity to take care of itself, even without a single Celtic supporter in the away corner. “There’s a great atmosphere,” he said. “But I just think it’ll be a bit strange not having the fans in, but as I say, the atmosphere takes care of itself.”

So it comes to this. A Rangers side desperate to end a trophy drought, led by a manager stepping back into Old Firm battle with the club where he once wore the shirt. A Celtic team still flawless in the league, guided by a coach who has made a habit of winning these games and who senses the chance to reclaim the one domestic prize that slipped away.

The first Old Firm of the season rarely decides anything. This one might feel different. With a semi-final place on the line and another derby waiting next weekend, whoever walks out of Ibrox still standing will carry more than just a win into the weeks ahead.