Derek McInnes has admitted he now has complete faith in his Rangers team after watching them defeat Celtic at Parkhead today and move to within two points of the William Hill Premiership leaders in the top flight table.
The Ibrox club, who ran out comfortable 3-0 winners over their city rivals in the Premier Sports Cup quarter-final in Govan the previous Sunday, had no supporters among the 58,000-strong crowd.
However, the visitors were comfortably the better team throughout the league encounter and deservedly prevailed thanks to a first half strike from their German-born forward Ryan Naderi.
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“Trust is the most important thing for me,” said McInnes. “I need to trust my team and trust the individuals within it. I don’t want to be a manager who doesn’t trust my team and I wasn’t sure where we were at the start. But slowly but surely we’ve got that.
“The clean sheets underpin all that. The biggest drain of confidence is losing bad goals. But the determination to keep the ball out of our net - while playing with real attacking verve - is something we didn’t have in the first few games of the season.
“I know we beat St Mirren 5-1, but other than that we weren’t playing with a panache or swagger. A Rangers team has got to show its teeth at the right time and have a cutting edge and we didn’t have that.
"I think we have that now, albeit we only scored one today. We have good togetherness and a good squad.”
McInnes continued, “I was calm towards the end in the sense that I feel as though I have a trust with my team. I feel we have developed that trust over the last few weeks. I cannot have a team that I don’t trust. And I feel as though I’ve had that in the last few weeks. But I wouldn’t say I was totally calm.
“When you see the talent that Celtic have invested in at the top end of the pitch, with other guys who have been over the course, you always know that there is maybe a chance in them. So I don’t think we were that calm.
“But James Penrice felt his ankle, Dan Neil felt his calf and Cammy Devlin actually does his hamstring in the last five minutes of the game when we’d used all our subs. Dujon Sterling was also feeling his hamstring a wee bit. So we didn’t have our troubles to seek in that last part so it was a big effort from everybody to get over the line.”
Rangers do not have another Premiership game for three weeks dure to the extended international break and McInnes was relieved they managed to avoid a costly defeat.
“In the context of the season, it was very important," he said. "We’d have heard all about if we’d lost and the gap was stretched to eight points at this early stage.
“So it was important to close that gap and also, with such a young squad, having the belief and confidence to win a game in this environment. Although we won 1-0, we should have scored more and added to it.
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“While it’s 1-0, Celtic are always going to keep going in front of their own fans. Martin was trying everything to make something happen for them and you always feel Celtic will get a big chance. Very rarely is that not the case.
“But we defended brilliantly as a team and winning here is another good reference point for us after last week. It’s still early in the season, only September and there’s 80 odd points to play for. So no-one is getting carried away. But to back up last week’s performance and result was really big for us.
“Sometimes when you have a young squad put together so quickly you work hard to try and manifest that (fight). You try and bring that bond and it’s a daily thing. You have to work at it. You have to make sure you’re looking after everybody.
“We knew coming here today that we had to look after each other out there. It’s a different set of circumstances to last week but we knew if we could get in front, the benefit of Celtic having 60,000 could actually impact on them.”
McInnes singled out Rangers striker Naderi, who picked up a bad ankle injury during the win over Celtic last weekend, for special praise in the wake of the impressive Parkhead triumph.
“I thought Naderi and others were brilliant last week,” he said. “But he took his game up another notch today. I wasn’t too happy with the strikers in the first 15 minutes. They weren’t holding the ball, were late to the party and weren’t doing what we asked them to do.
“But once they started to connect the game and link play, I thought we looked a real threat. The two of them were a proper handful for their three centre-backs.
“Naderi led the line brilliantly. It has helped him having Kevin [Kelsy] up there with him. We also have Bojan [Miovski] who is sharp every day in training and good and clean with his work. They both know he’s there.
“We had to deal with the double whammy of Youssef [Chermiti] and Lawrence [Shankland] being out. But we’ve coped well. It took month to get Kevin in and I knew once we did that the level of the others would come up. But I think Ryan has been terrific.
“His sheer willingness means he deserves good things to happen to him. I’m glad he’s managed to get himself on the scoresheet again. It was a big moment for him, but also a big moment for us as a club.”
