Rangers end preparations with West Ham stalemate as summer arrival embodies new era hopes

Just five days remain until Rangers' league campaign gets underway against Dundee United, with new head coach Derek McInnes aiming to erase a painful end to the 2025/26 season that saw Rangers’ title hopes dissipate with four defeats in their final five games.

As anyone who watched Rangers’ crumble when the split hit last season will know, recognising the team’s fragility was easy, but fixing it is the challenge. Of course, McInnes didn’t need reminding of their fatal flaw. After all, it was his Hearts side that effectively killed Rangers’ title hopes with a 2-1 comeback win at Tynecastle in early May.

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The additions of Lawrence Shankland, Dan Neil and Vanja Dragojevic, all captains of their previous clubs, show a real attempt to address the issue quickly, though, and there’s a calming assurance around how they’ve done their business this summer. If last season’s summer recruitment was a head scratcher, this season’s has been handed a nod of approval.

While this particular game didn’t offer much in terms of goalmouth excitement, there’s been a quiet confidence bubbling around Ibrox in pre-season. McInnes’ appointment met with almost unanimous approval; the club’s summer recruitment has been impressive, efficient, and plugged gaps that need filling for far too long, both on and off the pitch.

One of those characters brought to the club this summer, Cammy Devlin, continued where he left off from his impressive cameo against Saint-Etienne on Wednesday. Admittedly a bit of a snoozefest, the game was played at pre-season tempo for the bulk of the first 45 minutes, though the diminutive Australian clearly didn’t get the memo.

The terrier-like midfielder was all-action, geeing his teammates up and crunching into challenges. One can assume he would have been game for a half-time break battle with Rangers-daft ICW wrestling sensation Grado, who had led the team onto the pitch with a pre-game speech, if offered.

Sure, you can’t base too much opinion pre-season but (look away now Hearts fans), he looks like a player ready to play for Rangers, and one that will thrive, rather than shrink, in the pressurised environment. At the very least, he won’t go down without a fight on the evidence of what he’s shown so far.

It was Devlin’s industry that handed Rangers their best chance of the first half. Winning a tackle around 30 yards from goal, he fed a neat ball into Mohamed Diomande, whose eye-catching pirouette before was disappointing, backed up by a tame attempt from distance. Fellow summer signing Dan Neil replaced Devlin at the break alongside a raft of other changes. However, it failed to spark a change in pace, outside of a close-range Diomande header, and a rasping drive from the visitors’ Konstantinos Mavropanos.

An intriguing clash on paper, it brought little in terms of headlines. However, the rousing rendition of Penny Arcade in the final throws of the game at Ibrox was evidence that Rangers, for once, look and feel ready for the new season to begin. A night under the lights at Tannadice awaits.