More STEEL and PLUCK than “steal” and “luck”! Thistle … 1 GERS … 2 (Part 1)

Continued directly from the end of Part 1 (Complicated, eh?!)…

Maybe de Boer’s disappearing act was purely, again, as a result of the tactics. He certainly came more into it when he could drop back deeper following Latapy’s departure. In the end, The Farmer won us the match but all I know is that the two Gers defenders currently being portrayed by the Daily Retard and the like as the bad boys of the match were the only two who seemed to step up that extra gear from THE MOMENT Thistle scored. Barry Ferguson didn’t because, quite simply, Barry Ferguson COULDN’T have gone up a further gear - had he done so he’d have ended up playing for Thistle as well … he’d have been shooting at goal then clearing his own effort off Kenny Arthur’s line. Bazz was, again, IMMENSE.

Throughout the proceedings, Ferguson was the continual ray of hope. If you will, captain Bazz was the lighthouse by which the Rangers Championship challenge could steer safe passage through the treacherous waters of this match (all cringe!). Looking back on the game now, having watched it again on video, there’s no way a team can lose a game when they have someone playing for them as Barry Ferguson did yesterday. Defending, attacking, changing one to the other - Barry did it all. Man of the Match by an Amoruso free-kick.

Bazza just kept going in his usual god-like fashion but Muscat and Moore stopped Thistle scoring again by stopping Thistle in their own half. The fouls they were booked for weren’t bookings but the yellows they subsequently didn’t kop disqualify the Bears from a right to complain in this department.

With hindsight the Rangers efforts after the Thistle goal are a slow turning of the screw. Watching the match again on video, it’s rarely a pretty performance (golly, gosh - think I’ll cope!) and victory was never safe. However, as untidy and as stuttering as this Rangers display may have been, from the seventh minute, from the moment we lost the goal, it was ALWAYS improving and always taking us closer to a full recovery. Bazza’s the thread but Musact and Moore getting nasty in the opposition half was the screwdriver.

Bob Malcolm came on for Hutton in the second half. Can’t decide if it’s the way Bob played against Sutton two weeks ago or just the sheer lack of depth in our squad but I never thought I’d see the day when I was delighted by Malcolm’s introduction to the play.

I wasn’t so delighted by the introduction of young McLean for Stephen Huges but when our reserve striker got a shot in on goal within a minute of his arrival I was suddenly fully supportive of Eck’s decision.

Then we scored. Jezze, what a relief. We’d been more encamped round the Thistle box than at any time in the first half and the build-up play which has wreaked so much havoc on the SPL this season was at last starting to peak through the clouds of purposelessness which had spoiled so much of the day. Lovinpants had a shot, Arthur couldn’t hold it and Mikey Mols stabbed home in true Gerd Muller poaching style - reading the bounce better and quicker than anyone else.

Next, Britton was sent off. He did make contact with Musct’s face but there was no way it was an intentional punch - he was clearly flailing his arns in protest at the ref’s failure to penalise Kevin’s brutal tackle, administered simultaneously on Britton and two other Thistle players. Did the accidental contact hurt Muscat enough to merit the Ozzie hitting the deck like a sack of out-of-date spuds? If so then Underhill is the only man Partick Thistle should be angry with. But I don’t think so - do you?

I’m pretty convinced we’d have won the game against eleven men anyway - in fact the sending-off could have galvanised Thistle to even greater efforts - but, to me, Kevin Muscat ensured we would win it by deliberately getting an opponent sent off. The ref, had he seen the incident properly, would have dismissed Muscat, then Rangers would have been panicking and I fear Muscat’s Ibrox career would have been over if we’d lost or drawn. As it is, though, Muscat’s sheer brutality and cynicism were EXACTLY what we needed yesterday. His kind of mind-set is automatically riled by and defiant of the notion that “it’s just not our day”. I’m not applauding what he did but I’m not going to condemn it either. I’m tacitly approving of it. It’s exactly what we need to win the SPL.. Other teams can feel sorry for themselves - they obviously don’t want it bad enough.

Nine minutes after our equaliser we got our winner. Ronnie the Farmer, now on full game-running mode, hooked in a shot from the edge of the box which Lovinpants may well have touched but the Dane’s confusing presence on the goal-line did more to help the ball into teh net than any skliff or sklaff he may have administered to the holy white spherical thing.
Bedlam in front of the student digs and what had looked like a bleak chastening of our championship credentials was suddenly a test of championship character we’d passed with a double first.

A grey, grey day, deep in December, deep in the Thistle box. A melee of players, mud and mayhem and a ball trickling over a line. As The Gers raced away behind the goal and piled on top of each other, as the Bears fell over the plassy bucket seats and yelped for joy, we weren’t thinking of HOW Rangers had done it, we only knew they HAD done it.

One classy save from Stefan Klos later, the final whistle anounced we’d successfully defended our four-point lead at the first time of asking. A gap opened up last week because Sellik COULD NOT negotiate this type of unglamorous, lose-lose fixture. That gap stayed at four points because Rangers COULD and DID.