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Rangers required a stoppage-time goal to finally break St Mirren’s resistance in Wednesday’s rearranged Scottish Premiership match at Ibrox.

Bojan Miovski struck in the opening minute of added time to seal Rangers’ fourth successive league victory, echoing the same scoreline against the same opposition that had launched a four-game winning run at the end of last season.

Since then, there has been sweeping change in the west end of Glasgow. Danny Rohl’s spell in charge kept the Gers in the title race longer than might otherwise have been expected, but he was lured away by Red Bull Salzburg and replaced by Derek McInnes.

The new Rangers boss had pushed Celtic even harder in 2025/26 while managing Heart of Midlothian, guiding them to the brink of a fifth league title and in doing so securing his dream move.

McInnes was also able to bring international striker Lawrence Shankland with him from the east to Glasgow. Shankland had been his talismanic Hearts captain and is another player with Rangers in his blood. That is the way Scottish football often works, and Rangers have won the title 55 times.

This season is only six matches old and Hearts still have a game in hand on their former manager, but Celtic sit first and Rangers are second. Four straight wins have strengthened McInnes’ case as the right man to lead a side that is relatively short on natural quality.

A fair number of those points have come through character rather than pure ability. And just as Rangers were beginning to look a little more convincing, McInnes lost his on-field leader.

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His side defeated St Mirren without Shankland, who had been taken off eight minutes into last weekend’s victory over Motherwell after suffering a hamstring injury.

“It's a 2C tear and similar to the one he did previously at Hearts in January,” McInnes told reporters before Rangers faced the Buddies.

“He's actually in London now, he's getting an ultrasound scan, a follow-up scan, which is just to determine whether, with the specialist, he has surgery or whether he'll just let it heal naturally like he did the last time.

“My little knowledge I have of it is that if he has the surgery then he might be an extra three or four weeks.

“I think best-case scenario, three months, probably worst-case scenario in terms of time about four months.”

It is a crushing blow not only for the 31-year-old Glaswegian but also for a manager now tasked with keeping things on track without a player he knows inside out and who had finally begun to show his value in the Rangers shirt he had wanted to wear all his life. Their current four-match winning sequence began with a 1-0 victory over Aberdeen and a 2-1 win at Falkirk within four days.

Shankland, suddenly looking full of belief in a shirt that at last seemed to suit him, scored all three of those goals. Before that, he had found the net only once across Europa League qualifiers, Conference League qualifiers, a Premier Sports Cup tie and two Premiership fixtures.

In fact, what happened before those victories underlines the scale of the challenge now confronting McInnes. If first impressions count, his did little to convince Rangers supporters that McInnes — a figure well known to everyone in Scottish football — has what it takes to deliver the one thing that matters most in Glasgow.

The Gers were eliminated from Europe before their campaign could properly begin. Twice. Their Europa League journey started and finished against Polish side Jagiellonia Bialystok in the third qualifying round.

That sent them into the Conference League play-off round. Shankland, Miovski and Thelo Aasgaard converted their first three penalties, but Czech club Jablonec ultimately came out on top in the shoot-out.

That leaves Rangers with only three competitions in which to try to outdo Celtic. Their next chance comes on Sunday in the season’s first Old Firm derby, a Premier Sports Cup quarter-final at Ibrox that Shankland will have to watch from the sidelines.

Rangers’ recent upturn has represented a significant step forward in the early stages of McInnes’ reign, but it was Shankland who had been supplying the goals.

They have made an encouraging start without him, beating both Motherwell and St Mirren 1-0 in matches that were very different in terms of how comfortable they were for the Ibrox side.

Ryan Naderi, the 23-year-old who joined Rangers in February, came off the bench against the Steelmen to replace Shankland and scored within four minutes through sheer persistence.

His clever flick also created Miovski’s looping winner against St Mirren, although Rangers had to dig deep against a stubborn defence and the sharp attacking threat of a side managed by August’s Manager of the Month.

But Rangers are already living on narrow margins from one game to the next, and Shankland is a natural match-winner. The challenge for McInnes and Rangers now is to discover where that decisive edge will come from consistently over the next 16 weeks and beyond.