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By Ahmad Ali, Sports Editor
Derek McInnes stood in the tunnel at the Stadion Střelnice on Wednesday night and reached for the bluntest word he could find. “I’m mortified by the performance,” the Rangers manager said, after a squad rebuilt at a cost of tens of millions had been eliminated from the Conference League play-off by Jablonec, a Czech side who finished outside their own title race, 4-3 on penalties. “The opposition were better than us in most aspects.”
The numbers behind the sentiment are worse than the sentiment itself. Rangers arrived in Bohemia holding a 1-0 lead from Ibrox, courtesy of Ryan Naderi’s 50th-minute finish, and managed one shot on target across 120 minutes. Vakhtang Tchanturishvili levelled the tie on aggregate in the 73rd minute. Findlay Curtis skied his penalty over the crossbar, James Penrice was denied by Jan Hanus, and Jan Chramosta drilled in the kick that removed Rangers from European football entirely for the first time since 2017.
A £30m starting XI with nothing to show for it
The charge that stings most at Ibrox is not that Rangers lost, but who lost. Six of McInnes’s summer signings started in Jablonec and two more came off the bench. The players on the pitch carried a combined transfer valuation of roughly £30m, drawn from a summer budget understood to be in the region of £35m-£40m before sales.
The window has been one of the most aggressive in the club’s recent history, with around a dozen arrivals:
- Lawrence Shankland, signed from Hearts, McInnes’s former club
- Goalkeeper Ivor Pandur, a £6m purchase from Hull City
- Kim Min-su, an £8.5m capture from Girona
- Vanja Dragojevic, roughly £4.5m from Partizan Belgrade
- Ross McCrorie, returning for around £1m
- Ben Godfrey on loan from Atalanta, plus Olwethu Makhanya, Daisuke Yokota and Dan Neil
Out went the spine of the recent past: James Tavernier released, Jack Butland sold to Hull for £3m, Ben Davies gone on a free, Danilo loaned to Botafogo. This was not tinkering. It was demolition and reconstruction inside eight weeks, and McInnes has been candid that the job is unfinished, admitting he has been “playing with fire” over squad depth and that his team “looked very inexperienced at times.”
Two European exits, one damning pattern
Jablonec was not an isolated collapse. It was a repeat. In the Europa League third qualifying round, Rangers lost 3-2 on aggregate to Jagiellonia Białystok, beaten 2-1 in Poland before a 1-1 draw at Ibrox in which Lawrence Shankland’s penalty was cancelled out by Nik Prelec’s 65th-minute header. They were booed off that night. Three weeks later they surrendered a first-leg lead again.
Twice in a month, Rangers have failed to protect an advantage against opponents from leagues they are expected to dominate. One goal in 210 minutes against Jablonec, sub-47% possession in the decisive leg, and a red card for Cammy Devlin in the first leg — five minutes after coming on — that forced a reshuffle they never recovered from. Djeidi Gassama fired over from six yards in a one-on-one at Ibrox; Dragojevic hit the post. Wastefulness at one end, fragility at the other. That is not bad luck twice. That is a pattern.
McInnes did not hide behind the churn, though he acknowledged it: “I’m embarrassed and I’m so disappointed that we’ve been emptied out of Europe without really turning up, and that isn’t good enough.”
The uncomfortable comparison with last season
The honest answer to whether Rangers have improved is found in the recent past rather than in the summer’s invoices. Under Danny Röhl last season, Rangers finished third on 72 points, put together a 16-game unbeaten run and won an Old Firm derby 3-0. They reached a Champions League play-off and played Europa League football. They were still 10 points behind champions Celtic and eight behind Hearts, which is why the rebuild was sanctioned — but the floor was considerably higher than this.
McInnes is Rangers’ third permanent manager since June 2025, following Russell Martin’s four-month tenure that ended on 5 October and Röhl’s appointment on 20 October. Domestically, the new era has produced one point from the opening two league fixtures — a 1-1 draw at Dundee United and a 2-1 home defeat by Hibernian — leaving Rangers ninth in the Premiership. A 5-1 League Cup win over St Mirren on 16 August remains the outlier rather than the trend.
What happens now
The immediate consequence is financial as much as sporting. A season without European group-stage football, the first in roughly a decade, removes a revenue stream the club has come to budget around, at precisely the moment it has committed heavily to fees and wages. Chairman Andrew Cavenagh’s board backed a rebuild that has, so far, delivered regression.
The window closes at 5pm on 3 September, and McInnes wants four more additions — wingers, full-backs and defensive cover. Nicolas Raskin, left at home for the Jablonec trip amid interest McInnes said had “stepped up”, could fund them; the manager confirmed afterwards that no formal offer had arrived.
Judgement on a manager eight weeks into a total squad overhaul should carry caveats, and McInnes has earned the right at Aberdeen and Hearts to be measured over a season rather than a fortnight. But the caveats do not extend indefinitely. Celtic’s visit and the resumption of league football will be the first real examination, and a squad this expensive cannot keep offering inexperience as its defence.
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Facts drawn from prior research on this story plus live verification. Sources:
– [Yahoo Sports / BBC Sport — “Have expensively assembled Rangers improved at all under McInnes?”](https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/expensively-assembled-rangers-improved-under-224836410.html)
– [The Scotsman — ‘Mortified’ Derek McInnes dissects Rangers’ abysmal European exit](https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/rangers/latest-rangers-news/mortified-derek-mcinnes-dissects-rangers-abysmal-european-exit-nico-raskin-transfer-update-8945852)
– [Alloa Advertiser — McInnes ’embarrassed and mortified’ as Rangers exit Conference League](https://www.alloaadvertiser.com/sport/national/26502680.derek-mcinnes-embarrassed-mortified-rangers-exit-conference-league/)
– [News Letter — Raskin interest has ‘stepped up’](https://www.newsletter.co.uk/sport/football/rangers-boss-derek-mcinnes-reveals-nico-raskin-interest-has-stepped-up-after-midfielder-didnt-travel-for-jablonec-clash-8944243)
Two desk notes: the £30m figure is the reported valuation of the XI on the pitch in Jablonec, not confirmed spend — I’ve phrased it as a valuation. And the closing line references a Celtic fixture generically; check your fixture list before publication in case the next Old Firm date has moved.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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