Soccer-St Mirren end Rangers’ 27-game unbeaten start to season
St Mirren #StMirren
(Reuters) – Rangers manager Steven Gerrard shouldered the blame after St Mirren ended his side’s 27-game unbeaten start to the season on Wednesday, with Conor McCarthy’s injury-time goal giving the hosts a shock 3-2 Scottish League Cup quarter-final victory.
Rangers were ahead in the seventh minute through defender Connor Goldson but Jamie McGrath equalised from the penalty spot just before halftime and scored again eight minutes after the restart.
Steven Davis struck back for Rangers in the 88th minute before McCarthy smashed the ball home in the 92nd minute to spark wild celebrations and put St Mirren into a semi-final match-up against Livingston.
“This one is on me,” Gerrard said. “We just never performed well enough to get the result we wanted.
“From a defensive point of view you can’t defend how we’ve defended as a group but … all the decisions made over the course of the 90 minutes were made by me so I don’t think any finger pointing is deserved right now in terms of the group.”
The defeat ended Rangers’ first chance of winning a trophy this season as well as their unbeaten run, which included 23 wins and four draws in all of this season’s competitions.
Their last defeat prior to Wednesday was a 1-0 loss to Bayer Leverkusen on Aug. 6. That match was the second leg of a Europa League tie postponed from last season due to COVID-19.
Rangers have reached the last 32 of this season’s Europa League after coming through the group stage unbeaten.
Gerrard’s side lead the Scottish Premiership by 13 points ahead of defending champions Celtic, who have played two games less, and host Motherwell in the league on Saturday.
(Reporting by Simon Jennings in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Rutherford)