Scottish League Cup PREVIEW 13 Sep 2026: Ibrox, one crowd, and a semi-final draw waiting on the result

Rangers and Celtic meet at Ibrox on Sunday lunchtime in the last of the four Premier Sports Cup quarter-finals, and the winner will not have long to wonder who comes next: the semi-final draw is made immediately after the whistle.

Both arrived here by the same route and with the same ease. Rangers beat St Mirren 5-1 at Ibrox in the second round; Celtic won 4-0 at Dundee United the night before. Neither has been tested in this competition yet, and neither will be able to say that again on Sunday evening.

Derek McInnes takes charge of his first Old Firm derby as Rangers manager, and he comes into it on a run of narrow wins: 1-0 against Motherwell, 1-0 against St Mirren in midweek, 1-2 at Falkirk and 0-1 at Aberdeen before those. Four in a row, every one by a single goal. Bojan Miovski settled the St Mirren game from the bench in stoppage time, which is the sort of evening McInnes has been having — enough to win, never comfortable. He has had his players practising penalties, which tells you how he expects this one to go.

Martin O'Neill, back permanently at 74 after the interim spell that brought a Premiership title and a Scottish Cup, has taken Celtic through the season unbeaten domestically: 1-0 against Dundee, 5-1 at Kilmarnock, 2-1 against Falkirk, 3-0 against Aberdeen, 2-1 at St Mirren and 1-0 at St Johnstone in midweek, Mika Baur scoring the only goal. He has not settled on a goalkeeper, choosing between Sam Johnstone and Viljami Sinisalo, and said as much rather than pretending otherwise.

Both squads are thinned. Rangers are without Lawrence Shankland, Daisuke Yokota, Youssef Chermiti, Tuur Rommens, Kosta Nedeljkovic and Jose Cifuentes, which leaves Miovski carrying a frontline McInnes has called a godsend to have at all, with Ryan Naderi expected alongside him. Celtic are missing Alistair Johnston and Jota, Callum Osmand and London Emenalo, and Hyun-jun Yang is at the Asian Games with South Korea.

The tie is played in front of a home crowd only. Rangers offered an allocation of three hundred tickets after the disorder at last season's Scottish Cup quarter-final, Celtic turned it down, and there will be no away support at Ibrox. McInnes has asked the rest of the ground to make the difference: "Have their backs, not be on their backs."

There is a shadow over both clubs that neither will mention on Sunday. Celtic led LASK 4-0 in the Champions League play-off second leg and lost 5-1 to go out on aggregate. Rangers fell out of the Europa League qualifiers and were then beaten on penalties by Jablonec in the Conference League play-off. The League Cup is the first trophy of the season and, for two clubs whose European year is already over, it has become considerably more interesting than it looked in August.

St Mirren hold the trophy, which is worth saying out loud: they beat Celtic 3-1 in last season's final. Nick Walsh referees.