Haining pleads innocence as McCoist is left to fret

WILL Haining was adamant last night that he was not to blame for the injury to Pedro Mendes' wounded knee. The St Mirren player and the Rangers midfielder competed for a bouncing ball just before half-time at Hampden and Mendes came off a poor second and was stretchered from the field.

WILL Haining was adamant last night that he was not to blame for the injury to Pedro Mendes' wounded knee. The St Mirren player and the Rangers midfielder competed for a bouncing ball just before half-time at Hampden and Mendes came off a poor second and was stretchered from the field.

The initial assessment from Rangers is that Mendes has not suffered ligament damage which, if confirmed, will come as blessed relief to a club already labouring without the services of many midfield players. They have to play Celtic on May 9.

"Pedro's got a kick across the top of the knee and he's in pain," said Ally McCoist, the Rangers assistant manager. "He's iced-up and the next 24 hours should tell us everything."

McCoist said he didn't see the incident properly so he wouldn't make a call on innocence or guilt beyond pointing out that St Mirren are not a malicious team. "I don't think for a minute that St Mirren are dirty," he said. "They're physical, they play hard, but they're not dirty."

Haining was coming in for some stick from Rangers fans but the defender was convinced that the Mendes knock was just pure bad luck.

"The ball was relatively high," he said. "The two of us challenged for it and I don't think I touched him. It was a 50-50 ball and I made contact with the ball. I don't know if I touched him. I don't think I did. I never felt any impact. Maybe it (the injury] was because he fell awkwardly."

The St Mirren man pointed out that referee Calum Murray didn't see the incident as a foul.

McCoist was keeping his conclusions to himself until, you suspect, he has a proper look at the DVD. But the assistant manager was clear enough on the performance of his team. "It was a dream start," he said of Andrius Velicka's second-minute goal, "but we didn't play well again until we got the second. Overall I was disappointed with the way we played for an hour."

He singled out Kris Boyd for praise, saluting his 100th goal and praising his work ethic, not something you hear every day. "Kris was fantastic," he said. "The hardest job in football is to put the ball in the back of the net and it's a wonderful achievement to get the amount of goals he's got. But I was delighted with his game in general. Since the Birmingham thing he's been first class and he deserves all the plaudits."

All the headlines will be about Mendes, however.

Rangers supporters marked Boyd's century-breaking goal for their club by unfurling a banner that said it all. "100 goals and COUNTING. Kris Boyd – goal machine".

And the love-in between the Ibrox faithful and the production line plunderer, who has reached three figures in only 143 appearances, is one that the player hopes is still in its first flush, despite the club's attempts to sell him to Birmingham in January.

"The fans have been good to me and I've always said I want to stay here," said Boyd, the first Rangers player to rack-up 100 goals since Mark Hateley in 1994. "For weeks I have said I want to reach 100. Now I've got that, I want more. If I can finish my career at Rangers the way I've started, I'll be delighted."

Predictably, the country's top scorer by some margin, with 29 strikes to his name, claimed it didn't "bother" him that he did not feature on the four-man shortlist for the PFA Scotland player of the year awards. "A few years ago I got 39 goals and got nowhere then either," said the striker signed from Kilmarnock for £400,000 in January 2006.

Boyd does not lack supporters of his talent from within his own squad. Sometime striker partner Kenny Miller declared his scoring ratio "a fantastic goals record".

"It is unbelievable and would be at any level," said Miller of a forward often dismissed as marksman lethal only against mediocrity. There is more to Boyd's plundering power than that.