Rangers secured their first win over St Mirren in more than a year to end 2025 within six points of Scottish Premiership leaders Hearts and within three of Celtic before Saturday’s second Old Firm game of the season in the league. <\/b><\/p>\n
Goals in each half from Thelo Aasgaard – his second in as many games – and Emmanuel Fernandez subdued a St Mirren side who were looking for consecutive victories at Ibrox for the first time in their history.<\/p>\n
The League Cup winners got a goal back with 10 minutes left when Mikael Mandron headed in after home keeper Jack Butland had saved well from Miguel Freckleton. <\/p>\n
And that left the Paisley side rueing a missed penalty shortly before when captain Marcus Fraser’s tame effort was easily saved by Butland after the video assistant referee (VAR) officials spotted a handball. <\/p>\n
The visitors also blew a wonderful opportunity to level shortly after half-time following a mistake from the returning Rangers defender John Souttar, with Butland saving well from Mandron, who seemed set to score.<\/p>\n
That came after Aasgaard’s fine header from Jayden Meghoma’s cross had given Rangers a deserved lead at the interval, and just before a cross at the other end found Fernandez unmarked able to steer the ball past Shamal George.<\/p>\n
The goalkeeper had to be alert earlier on, tipping an acutely angled Mikey Moore volley onto the bar, and diverting a deflected Djeidi Gassama shot past a post. <\/p>\n
The Ibrox side’s evening could have been even more comfortable had Nico Raskin not missed a glorious early chance, although prior to that, Butland had saved well from Jayden Richardson. <\/p>\n
The win means Danny Rohl’s side have momentum to take to Celtic Park at the weekend, where a win would draw them level on points with the defending champions.<\/p>\n
The defeat is St Mirren’s first in six matches and is unlikely to spoil the the League Cup winners memories of an outstanding 2025. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rangers secured their first win over St Mirren in more than a year to end 2025 within six…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-258980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115811455172576332","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}