Rangers player ratings v Queen's Park: Ibrox trio get top marks as Rohl ensures lightning doesn't strike twice
Rangers wallop struggling Spiders to ease into the Scottish Cup’s last eight
Rangers exorcised the ghosts of last year’s Scottish Cup exit as old and new combined to ease the club into the quarter-final of the competition with a thumping 8-0 win against Queen’s Park on Sunday.
Strikes from Ryan Naderi (9, 49), James Tavernier (19, 26, 38 pen), Matthew Shiels’ own goal (43), Bojan Miovski (81), and Tochi Chukwuani (90) sealed Rangers’ biggest win of the season ahead of a mammoth week for Danny Rohl’s men.
Situated in the Ibrox main stand, the bulk of the pre-game chatter behind the press-box centred on how much trauma the home fans still felt almost exactly a year on from last year's 1-0 defeat to Queen’s Park at the same stage of the competition.
A game in which Tavernier missed a 97th-minute penalty, it pushed former head coach Philippe Clement towards the exit door, set in motion Rangers’ worst run of defeats at Ibrox, and brought a premature end to their hopes of domestic success in the process. So, for those who were there for last year’s damaging defeat, there was no complaint about the routineness of the victory against Sean Crichton’s second-tier strugglers.
Just three of the starting XI from last year’s humbling defeat remained 364 days later, with Tavernier, Liam Kelly, and Mohamed Diomande included in a much-changed Danny Rohl team that saw new signings Naderi and Tuur Rommens handed their full debuts for the club.
Any pre-match nerves were settled early, though, when a combination of the club’s longest serving player, Tavernier, and their newest arrival, Naderi, saw the latter head home the former’s inch-perfect corner unchallenged to fire the hosts into the lead early.
The skipper then added a second of his own shortly afterwards, arriving in the box to smash home a loose ball beyond the helpless Calum Ferrie. The Queen’s Park goalkeeper then punched Tavernier’s corner into his own net, and the captain completed his hat-trick from the penalty spot shortly afterwards, before Shiels’ own goal put the hosts 5-0 up before the break. Naderi scored his second goal minutes after the restart to make it six, Miovski added a seventh with nine minutes to go, before Chukwuani slammed home another with one of the final touches of the ball.
Sterner tests await in a mammoth week for Rangers, with Rohl’s side set to visit fourth-placed Motherwell at Fir Park on Wednesday, before they welcome league leaders Hearts to Glasgow in a clash that will likely go a long way in deciding which side ends the season as league champions.
Here’s how we rated the performance of each Rangers player in the Scottish Cup win over Queen’s Park:
Kelly 6, Tavernier 9, Djiga 7, Sterling 7 (Bajrami 6), Rommens 7 (Meghoma 6), Chukwuani 8, Diomande 7 (Matondo 5), Skov Olsen 6, Antman 9, Miovski 7, Naderi 9 (Aasgaard 5).
Star man: Ryan Naderi - Rangers’ new boy had a debut to remember, scoring two thumping headers to get himself off the mark early into his Ibrox career. He’ll have far tougher challenges to come, but the 22-year-old German looked physically imposing and involved in the attacking throughout, combining well with Tavernier and Antman until he was taken off with just under 30 minutes to play.
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