Old Firm Showdown: Rangers vs Celtic in League Cup Semi-Final

The first Old Firm of the season arrives with a sharp edge. This is no early-season sparring session. A place in the League Cup semi-finals is on the line, the stadium will be one-sided, and both Rangers and Celtic carry very different kinds of pressure into Ibrox on Sunday.

Rangers have not lifted a trophy since 2024. Celtic are chasing the one domestic prize that slipped from their grasp last season. Strip away the noise and it comes down to this: one of Glasgow’s giants will see a major target vanish before September is out.

Seven days later they meet again in the Premiership. Nobody in either dressing room is thinking that far ahead.

McInnes Steps Into the Cauldron

Derek McInnes knows what pressure feels like in Glasgow. He just hasn’t felt this version of it from the home dugout in an Old Firm.

The last time he stood opposite Martin O’Neill, it was in a title decider. As Hearts head coach, he watched a championship slip away in agonising fashion in what turned out to be his final game in that job. Now, at 55, he walks into Ibrox with the responsibility of ending Rangers’ silverware drought and landing a blow on a Celtic side that have started the league with six wins from six.

He has seen plenty of Celtic from the other side of the technical area. Sixty-one meetings as a manager, 10 wins. Enough to know what they bring, enough scars to know what happens if you switch off.

As a Rangers player, his only taste of the Old Firm brought victory. This, though, is different. This is his first Old Firm as Rangers manager, with 50,000 demanding noise and a semi-final spot at stake.

O’Neill, by contrast, walks into familiar fire. One of the fiercest derbies in football is part of his managerial DNA now. Twenty-eight games against Rangers, 16 wins. His record is strong, his understanding of the emotional swing of these days even stronger.

Rangers’ Frontline Puzzle

Rangers arrive in better form than they started the season, four straight wins steadying nerves after a sluggish opening. But McInnes has a problem in the one area you least want doubts before facing Celtic: centre-forward.

Captain Lawrence Shankland is out. So is Youssef Chermiti. The question is who carries the weight up top.

Ryan Naderi has made his case. He scored the winner against Motherwell after replacing the injured Shankland and kept his place for the midweek win over St Mirren. He went the distance, worked the line, did the dirty running. Yet it was substitute Bojan Miovski who delivered the decisive moment, coming off the bench to score the only goal.

That changes the conversation. Miovski, with his Aberdeen pedigree and eye for goal, suddenly looks like a live option to start an Old Firm. Does McInnes reward Naderi’s graft or lean into Miovski’s clinical edge?

Then there is Kevin Kelsy. The £9m deadline-day arrival from Portland Timbers made his first start in midweek. Physically, he looks built for this kind of game. Emotionally and rhythm-wise, he is still waiting for his first Rangers goal. Is an Old Firm at Ibrox the stage where he announces himself, or too big a gamble when every decision will be scrutinised?

McInnes has made it clear what he expects from the stands.

“We've got to bring the crowd with us,” he said. “You’re not going to play Celtic and dominate the game for 90 minutes. We’ll have spells, they’ll have spells… I think it’s important that we tap into having that 50,000 behind us… really make it as tough for Celtic as possible.”

He knows the pattern. Take chances when they come, give the crowd a lead to cling to, and the place can become suffocating for any opponent.

“If we can get ourselves in front, give the crowd something to get behind, then I think the strength of our club can be shown… if the 50,000 can be utilised… it will be difficult to stop.”

The message is blunt: Rangers must feed off the noise, and the noise must feed off them.

O’Neill’s Selection Dilemmas

Celtic arrive in Govan perfect in the league and fresh from a rotated win at St Johnstone, where O’Neill made five changes to protect key players for Sunday. The league form is immaculate, but his team sheet is anything but straightforward.

Camilo Duran is at the centre of it all. Six goals already this season, and his manager openly admitted they missed him in Perth. He came off the bench there, replacing Haissem Hassan and operating from the right, while Kasper Hogh – just back from injury – led the line.

Now the call comes: does Duran go back through the middle at Ibrox, with Hogh sacrificed? Or does O’Neill roll with both, stretching Rangers with pace and movement across the front?

At the back, Cameron Carter-Vickers watched the midweek game from the stands after starting every match up to that point this season. Dane Murray stepped in and delivered a composed display. It was exactly what O’Neill would have wanted from a deputy, but this is Ibrox, this is Celtic’s defensive leader, and this is the kind of tie where experience tends to win the argument.

In goal, there is another big decision. Wolves loanee Sam Johnstone started ahead of regular No 1 Viljami Sinisalo at St Johnstone and responded with a clean sheet and a crucial save at 0-0. That one moment may yet tilt Sunday’s call.

Does O’Neill trust the England international again in the Ibrox cauldron, or does he revert to the man who has been his mainstay?

Ibrox Belongs to One Side Only

If the football wasn’t intense enough, the backdrop will be unlike the traditional Old Firm roar. This will be a one-sided wall of sound.

Only Rangers fans will be inside the 50,000-capacity Ibrox for this League Cup quarter-final. The authorities have shut out away supporters amid an ongoing dispute over ticket allocations between the clubs.

Both sides had previously agreed to a five per cent away allocation for all SPFL games at both grounds. That fragile truce did not survive the fallout from on-pitch clashes between fans after their Scottish Cup meeting in March. An independent review followed, and the arrangements were ripped up.

So Celtic go to Govan alone. Not for the first time. They have been here before without their own support and won, a memory that will stiffen belief in the Parkhead camp, even if the occasion feels different without that pocket of green and white in the corner.

O’Neill is braced for the strangeness of it.

“Looking forward to it in the usual way, nervously looking forward to it, excitedly looking forward to it. It’s a great fixture,” he said. “It’ll be strange… not to have any away fans in our area. I always felt as if it would give you a crumb of comfort… but it is what it is.”

The build-up has included a reminder that this game lives under a microscope.

“We had police come in today, just a little 15-minute meeting with us, just reminders of our behaviour… it’s a good thing as well… Gosh, it’d be nice to have something to celebrate. I think it’s just general behaviour from us.”

He knows that once the whistle goes, the chaos takes on its own rhythm.

“The games themselves almost take care of themselves… There’s a great atmosphere. The league game that we played, 2-0 down early… and Ibrox probably as loud as it’s ever been… I just think it’ll be a bit strange not having the fans in, but as I say, the atmosphere takes care of itself.”

The stage is set: Rangers chasing a first trophy in years, Celtic hunting down the one that got away, a stadium roaring for one side only, and two managers with very different Old Firm histories.

By Sunday night, one of them will have turned that noise into momentum. The other will be left wondering how quickly this season’s story can be rewritten.