Peter Hartley had the last laugh over Rangers as the Motherwell skipper's 94th-minute equaliser sealed a 3-3 draw at Fir Park.
The defender had been forced to issue an apology on Thursday after mocking former Gers defender Fabio Cardoso and the broken nose he suffered in a tussle with Well frontman Ryan Bowman last term.
But it was Hartley who grabbed the injury-time equaliser as the Light Blues threw away victory for the second time in three Ladbrokes Premiership games.
Rangers found themselves behind for the first time under Steven Gerrard as Danny Johnson opened the scoring early, but they fought back twice with goals from Kyle Lafferty after Carl McHugh had also struck for the hosts.
It looked like Ovie Ejaria's goal just before the break would send Rangers on their 4,600-mile Europa League round trip to Ufa on Thursday in confident mood - only for Hartley to pounce with the last kick of the game.
Gerrard, who will experience his first ever Old Firm next weekend, said his team would learn from a "bump in the road".
"Before the game this was a massive week for us with three big games but if we went and won all the games we weren't going to get carried away," he told BT Sport.
"Now we've had a bump in the road and rather than start to panic we need to just learn from it and move on."
In the lead-up to the game, Hartley had apologised to Rangers over comments he made about a match between the teams last season, after saying it had been "fun to watch" the then Rangers defender Cardoso in pain after breaking his nose.
Motherwell midfielder Gael Bigirimana said of Hartley: "None of us agreed with the comments. We don't want to see that or hear stuff like that. But for today he was great as a leader. He stuck to his game and he got us a great goal."
