Celtic stretch lead to 12 points as Rangers crash at St Mirren

Rangers’ recent revival came to a crashing halt as a 2-1 defeat at St Mirren allowed Celtic to stretch their Scottish Premiership lead to 12 points on Thursday.

Other than a League Cup final defeat on penalties to Celtic, Rangers had been on an 11-game unbeaten run stretching back to October, but any remaining hopes of a title challenge were washed away in Paisley.

Jack Butland’s mistimed lunge on Greg Kiltie allowed Oisin Smyth to open the scoring from the penalty spot on 30 minutes.

Philippe Clement reacted at half-time with the introduction of Danilo and the Brazilian levelled on the hour mark after a goalmouth scramble.

But as Rangers chased a winner, they were hit with a sucker punch in stoppage time when Caolan Boyd-Munce’s wonder strike secured St. Mirren’s first win over the Glasgow giants since 2020.

“We threw away 45 minutes. Our first half was not acceptable, not good enough,” said Clement.

“You give belief to your opponent. A lot of things went wrong. I was angry at half-time.”

Celtic bounced back from dropping points for just the second time in the league this season in a 0-0 draw at Dundee United on Sunday with a 4-0 thrashing of Motherwell.

The Scottish champions were frustrated until Arne Engels’ penalty opened the scoring in first-half stoppage time.

Celtic cut loose after the break as Daizen Maeda’s bullet header doubled their lead.

Nicolas Kuhn and Reo Hatate then came off the bench to add further goals with shots from outside the box.

“In the second half we just needed to up the tempo and the players did that ever so well, pressed the game when we had to, and we looked really creative,” said Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers.

“They didn’t panic and they got the rewards.”

Aberdeen missed the chance to retake second spot as the Dons’ slide continued in a 4-0 defeat at Kilmarnock.

After winning 15 and drawing the other of their opening 16 games under Jimmy Thelin, Aberdeen are now winless in seven.

Kyle Vassell, David Watson, Innes Cameron and Bruce Anderson were on target for Killie, who move up to eighth.

Hibernian earned the bragging rights over Hearts in the Edinburgh derby as Dwight Gayle’s late goal secured a 2-1 win at Tynecastle.

Agence France-Presse