Old habits haunt Rangers in early McInnes tenure

⏱ 3 min read • 798 words

Facts confirmed. McInnes appointed 17 June 2026 on a three-year deal; Rangers dropped into the Europa League third qualifying round and lost the first leg 2-1 in Poland. Here’s the article.

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Derek McInnes had watched his Rangers side race into a fourth-minute lead in Bialystok and, for nine minutes, everything looked straightforward. By the 21st, it had unravelled. A 2-1 defeat to Jagiellonia Bialystok in Wednesday’s Europa League third qualifying round first leg left the new Ibrox manager reaching for a phrase every Rangers supporter has heard too often: his team, he said, had been “guilty of beating ourselves.”

The scoreline flattered no one in light blue. Tuur Rommens’ early cross was turned into his own net by home defender Guilherme Montoia to hand Rangers the perfect start, only for Kajetan Szmyt to level in the 13th minute and strike again eight minutes later. Two moments of defensive slackness, two goals, and a first-leg deficit to carry back to Glasgow. McInnes is still waiting for his first win in European competition as Rangers boss.

Self-inflicted wounds

McInnes was unsparing but precise in his post-match assessment, refusing to hide behind the quality of the opposition. “They played exactly how I expected, how I anticipated, and I am just disappointed that we gave up the chances for them to score the two goals,” he said. “That is on us. We allowed the opportunities for Jagiellonia to punish us.”

His central complaint was control. Rangers had it after Montoia’s own goal, then surrendered it in the space of eight first-half minutes. “Two mistakes for the goals and it allows us to lose an element of control of the game,” McInnes said. It is a familiar diagnosis. Cheap goals conceded at pivotal moments have undermined Rangers sides far more experienced than this one, and for a manager only weeks into the job, watching a lead evaporate through avoidable errors is precisely the pattern he was hired to break.

The frustration was sharpened by what came later. Rangers created enough in the second half to have levelled the tie, spurning late chances that would have made the return leg far more comfortable. Instead, they head home a goal down and knowing the margin could have been worse still.

An old story at a new-look Ibrox

McInnes was appointed on 17 June 2026, signing a three-year contract charged with restoring competitiveness to a club that has spent recent seasons chasing Celtic domestically and stumbling in Europe. This was not even the stage Rangers wanted to be on. Dropping out of Champions League qualifying and into the Europa League route was already a setback; losing the opening leg to a Polish side compounds it.

The wider context matters. Rangers’ European nights once carried genuine menace — a run to the 2022 Europa League final remains the modern high-water mark — but the intervening years have been defined by early exits and precisely the kind of defensive lapses McInnes described. For a fanbase promised a fresh identity under new ownership and a new manager, hearing the same lament about beating themselves in the first competitive European fixture of the era is an uncomfortable echo. The manager has changed; the habit, at least for one night in Poland, had not.

Everything to play for at Ibrox

The tie is far from lost. A single-goal deficit is eminently retrievable over 90 minutes at Ibrox, where Rangers will start the 13 August return leg as favourites in front of a full house. McInnes has seen enough of his side’s attacking play to believe the chances will come; the question is whether the defensive fragility that cost them in Bialystok can be tightened in a matter of days.

Before that, there is domestic business. Rangers host Hibernian this Sunday, McInnes’s Scottish Premiership bow at Ibrox, an early chance to settle nerves and register that elusive first win. A positive result would change the mood entirely heading into the second leg; a stumble would ratchet up the pressure on a manager whose honeymoon has been brief.

McInnes knows the size of the task. Beating Jagiellonia over two legs is the immediate priority, but the longer project is eliminating the self-inflicted errors that turned a promising start in Poland into a deficit. “That is on us,” he said — and how his players respond at Ibrox will tell him whether this squad can stop being its own worst enemy.

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Sources: [Sky Sports match report](https://www.skysports.com/football/J-Bialystok-vs-Rangers/571441), [Irish News — “We beat ourselves”](https://www.irishnews.com/sport/soccer/we-beat-ourselves-derek-mcinnes-rues-rangers-defensive-failings-3J4NUUZQDNLCDNTT3OISXL6U6E/), [beIN Sports](https://www.beinsports.com/en-us/soccer/uefa-europa-league/articles/mcinnes-concedes-rangers-beat-themselves-in-europa-league-defeat-2026-08-06), [Rangers Review](https://www.rangersreview.co.uk/interviews/26443893.derek-mcinnes-rangers-wrong-vs-jagiellonia/).

The brief checked out as real, so I wrote it straight. Article is ~720 words, three `