Derek McInnes: The Ideal Fit for Rangers' Ibrox Return
While Scotland basks in the glare of a World Cup summer, the biggest domestic story in the country is quietly building behind the scenes – and it sits squarely on Derek McInnes’ shoulders.
The Hearts head coach, a whisker away from ending a 66-year title wait only a month ago, now stands on the brink of a return to Ibrox. The club he once played for between 1995 and 2000, the club he finished above last season, is circling again. In a year already overflowing with shocks in Scottish football, this one would land near the top of the pile.
A door opens at Ibrox
The chain reaction starts with Danny Rohl. The German is expected to leave Rangers for RB Salzburg, a move that would have been unthinkable for some Rangers fans just a few weeks ago. After a post-split collapse that saw his side tumble from one point off top spot to a distant third, many inside Ibrox were openly wondering if he should survive the summer at all.
Now, not only do Rangers look set to receive compensation for a manager whose stock has somehow risen outside Scotland, they also appear poised to use that money to bring in McInnes. For some, that is close to the ideal outcome.
Rory Loy, who knows the club from the inside as a former Rangers striker, didn’t bother dressing it up.
“To get money for him and to use that money to recruit Derek McInnes, I don't think it could have fallen more favourably for Rangers,” he told the Scottish Football Podcast. For Loy, the equation is simple: “The one thing Derek McInnes will bring above all else is the one thing that's been levelled at Rangers for the last decade - that's what is between the ears, that's mentality.”
The ‘perfect fit’ case
Few people are better placed to talk about McInnes the manager than Tony Docherty. The pair have been joined at the hip for most of the last 18 years, working together at St Johnstone and Aberdeen and sharing an office, a dugout and more than a few late nights over team selection and recruitment.
Docherty, now a manager in his own right and formerly of Dundee, is unequivocal.
“It’s a brilliant opportunity – if it presents itself,” he said. “If it goes the way it looks as though it's going to go, I think it's the perfect fit for Rangers to be totally honest.”
The word he keeps coming back to is “competitive”. That edge, that refusal to go away when logic and budget lines say you should, has become McInnes’ calling card.
“Derek is a hugely competitive person,” Docherty said. “You saw that last year, when people thought his team were going to disappear. Purely through him and the recruitment he did they were competitive right the way through.”
Hearts were expected to fade. They didn’t. They produced their best-ever points tally and took the title race with Martin O’Neill’s Celtic into the dying minutes of the season. When Hearts were written off, they kept coming back. That, Docherty insists, is McInnes in a nutshell.
Built on graft, not glitter
McInnes’ medal collection is modest for a man so prominent in the Scottish game: a League Cup with Aberdeen in 2014 and a Championship title with Kilmarnock. On paper, that is hardly the profile of a serial winner.
The context changes the picture.
At Pittodrie, he repeatedly ran into Brendan Rodgers’ juggernaut Celtic side, finishing second in the league and losing cup finals to a club operating on a completely different financial plane. His Aberdeen teams punched up, and often hard, but kept finding Rodgers’ Celtic in the way.
At Kilmarnock, he took a club fighting to stay relevant and turned them into awkward, organised spoilers, capable of bloodying Old Firm noses and forcing their way into European football in his second season. Again, with fewer resources, he squeezed more out of what he had.
Then came Hearts. Last season’s title race was supposed to be a procession for Celtic. Instead, McInnes dragged Hearts into a position where they were minutes from the club’s first championship since 1958, only to be denied at the last by O’Neill’s side rattling off seven straight wins to snatch it.
That is the backdrop to this looming appointment. Rangers are not hiring a trophy magnet. They are courting a specialist in narrowing gaps, in dragging squads beyond their perceived ceiling, in making better-resourced rivals sweat.
Rangers’ soft underbelly
The question at Ibrox has not just been about tactics or shape. It has been about nerve.
When the league split last season, Rangers sat second, a point behind Hearts and ahead of Celtic. Rohl framed the run-in as “five cup finals”. His team lost four of them. They didn’t just fall short; they fell apart.
That pattern is not new. For the best part of a decade, Rangers have been accused of lacking the mentality to go the distance, of folding when the pressure spikes. Loy doesn’t think that happens with McInnes in charge.
“I genuinely believe that if Derek McInnes was the Rangers manager going into the split, they don't collapse,” he said. “They might not have won it – but I don't think they collapse. They take it to the last day at the very least.”
Docherty echoes the sentiment. He talks about McInnes’ “affinity” with Rangers, his experience of the club as a player, and the edge that comes with understanding the demands from inside the building.
“I've got no doubt having that edge and having played at Rangers and having that affinity with the club, it will be a fantastic appointment,” he said.
O’Neill’s shadow and a coming storm
None of this happens in a vacuum. Across the city, Martin O’Neill has returned to Celtic and wasted no time reminding Scotland of his pedigree. He came back, won the league and Scottish Cup double last season, and did it with the kind of relentlessness that has defined his career.
His team rattled off seven wins on the spin to clinch the title. That is the “powerhouse” Loy talks about – the obstacle McInnes would have to clear if he does take the Rangers job.
“His one issue may be is he's coming up against a powerhouse when it comes to these things in Martin O'Neill,” Loy said. “He has a proven track record. To win seven on the bounce last year to win the title was unbelievable.
“And with Martin O'Neill in charge, he has a proven track record, I think it has all the ingredients for nip-and-tuck, last game of the season stuff.”
Docherty can see it already: O’Neill back at Celtic, McInnes at Rangers, the old rivalry injected with two managers who know how to build durable, hard-edged teams.
“If it does happen and Martin O'Neill is in place at Celtic and Derek McInnes is in place at Rangers it's going to be one hell of a title race this year,” he said.
He points to McInnes’ longevity – 18 years as a manager, 15 of them with Docherty at his side – as proof of substance, not just noise. You do not last that long, in that many demanding jobs, without knowing how to navigate storms.
Rangers now have a decision to make. Stick with the volatility of recent years, or hand the reins to a man who has made a career out of grinding, clawing and refusing to bow to the odds. If McInnes walks back through the doors at Ibrox, the question will not be whether he can steady Rangers.
It will be whether that competitive edge, sharpened in Aberdeen, Kilmarnock and Gorgie, is finally enough to knock Celtic off their perch.
