{"id":886080,"date":"2026-10-18T00:52:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T00:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/886080\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T00:52:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T00:52:15","slug":"rangers-pop-balloon-at-dundee-as-dan-neil-gift-wastes-chance-to-go-top","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/886080\/","title":{"rendered":"Rangers ‘pop balloon’ at Dundee as Dan Neil gift wastes chance to go top"},"content":{"rendered":"

As far as optimism goes, Rangers were blown full of positive energy as they made the Saturday-night trip to Dundee on the back of seven straight wins. <\/p>\n

However, a Dan Neil error felt “like a balloon popping”, said manager Derek McInnes, resulting in the Ibrox side fluffing their chance to move back to the Scottish Premiership summit after a gripping 2-2 draw at Dens Park<\/a>.<\/p>\n

McInnes’ men were punished for a disjointed first half when the impressive hosts went ahead through Bradley Fink, but Badredine Bouanani fired in a leveller just before the break.<\/p>\n

Rangers lifted their intensity and level of dominance after the interval and were heading for an eighth consecutive victory when Nicolas Raskin slammed in a long-range stunner.<\/p>\n

But a mishit Neil backpass to goalkeeper Ivor Pandur was pounced on by Callum Jones to earn Dundee a deserved point, opening the door for Celtic to extend their lead at the top to four points when they welcome Hearts on Sunday (15:00 BST).<\/p>\n

“We’ve made a mistake for Dundee’s equaliser and it was like a balloon popping,” McInnes told BBC Scotland. “We then had to dig deep and go again, and we never quite managed to get to the same levels.<\/p>\n

“It does feel like a missed opportunity, but in fairness to Dundee they were good value in the first half – it shows you why they are where they are in the league.<\/p>\n

“But we can’t come away from home and have to score three goals to win a game.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As far as optimism goes, Rangers were blown full of positive energy as they made the Saturday-night trip…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":886081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-886080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/886081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}