PUNISHMENT EXORCISE

Haunted Gers make Spiders pay for last year's Cup exit

- ANDY NEWPORT AT IBROX

PHILIPPE CLEMENT used to insist while Ibrox boss that he was no magician.

But Danny Rohl can claim to be an exorcist.

This encounter with Queen's Park came one day shy of a year since Callum Davidson's Spiders stunned Clement's Light Blues by dumping them out of the Scottish Cup.

The ghosts of that humiliating defeat were well and truly laid to rest as Rohl's rampaging Rangers buried any chance of a repeat upset.

The loss to the Championship strugglers played a huge role in Clement's demise, with the Belgian axed a fortnight after a 97th-minute penalty miss from James Tavernier consigned his side to one of the worst results in the club's history. But the skipper made up for his part on that day of shame this time with a first-half hat-trick.

His corner had already teed up new signing Ryan Naderi to head home his first goal for the club before he slammed home at the second attempt from a Mohamed Diomande cross.

Calum Ferrie - last year's Queen's hero with his last-gasp penalty stop - turned fall guy when he let Tavernier's in-swinging corner slip through his grasp into the net.

He was beaten again as the right-back slammed home a penalty after Roddy MacGregor was penalised for handball.

Tavernier claimed another assist just before the interval when his corner was turned into the net by Matty Shiels.

Gers took their foot off the gas in the second half but still added three more.