Rangers find themselves trailing third-placed St Mirren on goal difference, following a bright start from the Paisley side.<\/p>\n
Head coach Craig McLeish has earned plaudits for implementing a more fluid style and he was named Premiership manager of the month for August.<\/p>\n
“I’m not surprised it’s come together so quickly – I get that from the outside it might look like that,” McLeish said. <\/p>\n
“There’s an internal belief about what we’re doing and the work we can do on the pitch. It could have been even better and we were close to it being even better.”<\/p>\n
However, the Buddies have already been to Ibrox this season and were soundly thrashed in the Premier Sports Cup.<\/p>\n
James Penrice enjoyed a lively Rangers debut that day, scoring one of five goals and setting up another.<\/p>\n
The left-back has started each game since, along with central defenders Olwethu Makhanya and Emmanuel Fernandez. While the latter is prone to the odd wobble, a settled defence has provided a platform for the recent upturn in results.<\/p>\n
Motherwell rarely threatened at Ibrox on Saturday as Rangers spurned several good opportunities to increase their lead.<\/p>\n
That result came after wins over Aberdeen and Falkirk. McInnes says confidence is building while admitting there is still a pressure to succeed.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think that ever lifts until you’ve got a trophy in your hand,” he said. <\/p>\n
“But I do think there’s been a good feel about the place. What we have had in recent weeks is just small steps, encouragement, confidence levels.”<\/p>\n
The loss of Lawrence Shankland to injury just as the striker had found his shooting boots is a blow, so Kevin Kelsy may not have the luxury of easing himself into his new surroundings.<\/p>\n
Rangers won the previous two league games against St Mirren by the odd goal but prior to that the visitors had an unbeaten streak of four in this fixture.<\/p>\n
Celtic had to work hard for their weekend win in Paisley, with McLeish’s team impressive between both boxes but lacking a killer touch. <\/p>\n
St Mirren will be without the bite of Paul Nsio, who can’t play against his parent club, and that could be telling since Rangers had the run of midfield in that cup tie last month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rangers find themselves trailing third-placed St Mirren on goal difference, following a bright start from the Paisley side.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-765012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}