Old Firm Showdown: Rangers Host Celtic for League Cup Semi-Final

The first Old Firm of the season doesn’t creep up on Glasgow. It rattles the city days in advance. This one comes with a twist: a League Cup semi-final spot on the line and 50,000 Rangers fans – and only Rangers fans – packed into Ibrox.

Rangers host Celtic on Sunday, with a Premiership showdown at Celtic Park looming just a week later. The calendar says September, but the stakes feel like spring.

Celtic arrive perfect in the league, six wins from six. Rangers, after stumbling out of the blocks, have strung together four straight victories and begun to look like themselves again. The form guide says one thing. The Old Firm usually says something else entirely.

Rangers have not lifted a trophy since 2024. Celtic are chasing back the only domestic prize that got away from them last season. Bragging rights? This is about ending droughts and restoring habits.

McInnes Steps Into the Cauldron

Derek McInnes knows pressure. He has lived in it, lost in it and occasionally thrived in it.

The last time he stood opposite Martin O'Neill, it was with Hearts in a Premiership title decider. He left that day beaten and, as it turned out, out of a job. Agonising doesn’t quite cover it.

Now 55, McInnes returns to the sharp end of Scottish football with Rangers. He has faced Celtic 61 times as a manager and found a way to win 10 of them. Not dominant, but not overawed either.

As a player, he tasted the Old Firm only once in Rangers colours. He won. On Sunday, he walks into it for the first time as the man in the home dugout, carrying the weight of a club that expects silverware, not stories of progress.

Across the technical area, O'Neill is on familiar ground. Few managers are as steeped in this derby. Twenty-eight games against Rangers, 16 wins. That’s not just experience, that’s a record that commands respect.

He knows what the noise sounds like when Ibrox roars. He also knows how quickly it can turn.

Rangers’ Striker Puzzle

McInnes’ biggest call might come right at the top of the pitch.

Captain Lawrence Shankland is out. So is Youssef Chermiti. The spine of his attack has gone missing at precisely the wrong moment.

Ryan Naderi has done what any striker must: score at the right time. He came off the bench to hit the winner against Motherwell when Shankland went off injured, and McInnes rewarded him with a start against St Mirren. He stayed on for the full 90, but it was substitute Bojan Miovski who delivered, grabbing the only goal.

Miovski’s strike changes the conversation. The former Aberdeen forward knows this league, knows big occasions, and has just reminded everyone he still carries a threat. Does that goal nudge him into the starting XI for the biggest match of McInnes’ Rangers tenure so far?

Then there is Kevin Kelsy, the £9m deadline-day signing from Portland Timbers. He made his first start in midweek, still searching for his first goal in a Rangers shirt. Raw, powerful, expensive – and untested in the unique chaos of an Old Firm.

Does McInnes throw him into the fire and hope the occasion forges something, or decide that this is a day for men who already understand the tempo?

O’Neill’s Options: Duran, Hogh and Big Calls at the Back

O'Neill rotated heavily for Celtic’s midweek win at St Johnstone, making five changes with this game clearly in mind.

Camilo Duran, on six goals already this season, is expected to come straight back into the starting line-up. O'Neill admitted they missed him in Perth. When he did arrive from the bench, he operated off the right, with Kasper Hogh – just back from injury – leading the line through the middle.

That sets up a fascinating decision. Does O'Neill restore Duran to his favoured central role and sacrifice Hogh, or try to fit them both into the same front line at Ibrox? Goals are never guaranteed in this fixture. Having two natural finishers on the pitch might be tempting.

At the back, the Cameron Carter-Vickers question hangs over the team sheet. The defender has started every game this season, then was given a full rest in midweek. Dane Murray came in and did himself no harm with a solid performance, but experience in an Old Firm at Ibrox is a different currency.

Logic points to Carter-Vickers returning. O'Neill will know exactly what that presence does for the players in front of him.

Then there is the goalkeeper call. Wolves loanee Sam Johnstone got the nod over regular No 1 Viljami Sinisalo at St Johnstone and produced a key save at 0-0 on the way to a clean sheet. He did nothing to weaken his case.

Johnstone’s handling of crosses, his composure, his familiarity with hostile environments in England – all of it will be weighed against Sinisalo’s status as the usual starter. Changing keepers for an Old Firm is not a decision taken lightly, but O'Neill has already shown he is willing to trust the England international.

Ibrox, One-Sided Noise

The backdrop to all of this is unusual even by Old Firm standards.

Only Rangers fans will be inside Ibrox for this League Cup quarter-final, a 50,000-strong wall of blue ordered by the authorities after a ticket allocation dispute between the clubs.

Both sides had previously agreed to a five per cent away allocation for SPFL games at Ibrox and Celtic Park. That truce did not survive the fallout from on-pitch clashes between supporters after their Scottish Cup tie in March and the subsequent independent review.

So Celtic head to Govan alone. No pocket of green and white in the corner, no small roar to cling to in the moments when the game turns against them. They have been here before without their own support and still found a way to win, a memory that will steady nerves in the stands at Parkhead, if not in the away dressing room on Sunday.

For Rangers, the responsibility is clear. McInnes has already spelled it out.

He wants his players to drag the crowd with them, not shrink under its demands. He knows they will not dominate Celtic for 90 minutes. No one does. He expects swings in momentum, spells where his team must suffer and spells where they must be ruthless.

What he demands is that when those chances come – the ones they passed up against Motherwell and again in midweek – Rangers take them, get their noses in front and unleash the full force of Ibrox.

If that happens, he believes, “the strength of our club” becomes something Celtic struggle to withstand.

O’Neill’s Old Firm Instinct

O'Neill approaches the game with that familiar blend of nerves and excitement that only this fixture seems to generate for managers who have lived it.

He has already called it what it is: a great fixture, even stripped of away support. He admits it will feel strange without a single Celtic fan in their section, that the usual “crumb of comfort” is gone.

Police have already visited the Celtic camp for a short meeting on behaviour and conduct – a sign of what this derby has become off the pitch as much as on it. O'Neill welcomed the reminder. He knows the atmosphere will take care of itself.

He has seen Ibrox at its loudest. He remembers being 2-0 down early in a league game there, the stadium shaking with noise, and his team still finding a way to turn the occasion into a contest.

This time, the stands will roar in only one direction. The question is whether that amplifies Rangers’ resurgence or sharpens Celtic’s focus.

A semi-final place. A trophy Rangers desperately need. A cup Celtic want back. No away fans. Two managers with history, one making his Old Firm dugout debut, the other chasing yet another statement in a rivalry that has defined much of his career.

The season is young, but Sunday already feels like a fork in the road. Who dares shape it?