Miovski's stoppage-time winner saves Rangers from a seven-point gap

Without Miovski's finish, Rangers would have been seven points adrift of the reigning champions six games into the season.

And what comes next

The timing compounds it. Derek McInnes takes his side to face Martin O'Neill's Celtic in Sunday's Premier Sports Cup quarter-final, then visits Celtic Park in the Premiership a week later.

Arriving at that pair of fixtures on the back of a dropped home point, seven behind, would have framed both around crisis. Arriving level-ish and unbeaten at home frames them differently.

Rangers are now unbeaten in five home games, winning the latest four since a defeat by Hibernian last month — a result that piled early pressure on McInnes, coming alongside the club's exit from European competition.

The performance, though

None of which addresses the football. The display was laboured for long stretches, and a side that needs a 90th-minute goal at home to St Mirren is not obviously ready for what is coming.

Celtic have their own questions. Martin O'Neill said afterwards that his main man had only come on in the last 10 or 15 minutes, describing that as food for thought, after a much-changed side failed to add to its tally following Mika Baur's goal early in the second half.

Both halves of the Old Firm, then, go into the double-header having won without convincing.