Rembrandt, Vermeer, de Boer (Arabs … 1 GERS … 4)

A Dutch Master. There you go - I’ve said it. It’s a pun-tastic reference to Ronald de Boer’s one-man show on Tayside this weekend which you’ll be reading in every tabloid, broadsheet and internet report on this game. I might as well get it out the way now because, common as it is, it’s the most perfect summation of The Farmer’s football at Tannadice Park on Sunday 13th April 2003.

He’s been building up to it all season, Ronnie has. Some say it’s McLeish’s man-management but I say it’s the injuries … or lack of them. Since arriving in September 2000, the attacking half of the de Boer twins often struggled to look like a man who’d played for Barcelona, Ajax and the KNVB. This season has been different. He’s still had the odd ineffectual game but they’re now far more the exception than the rule.

Today was Ronald de Boer’s best ever performance in a Rangers jersey. The kind of genius which not only scores two goals and sets two up for a team-mate but does so with a grace and elan which takes supporters to a state of rapture, isn’t instilled by a manager. Alex McLeish’s brilliance is his recognition of de Boer’s brilliance and his faith in it, often in the face of so much hostility from the Rangers support.

What we got on Tayside today was Ronald de Boer’s ideal of himself - the level of performance he’s so obviously aiming towards when, in every other game he’s played for Rangers, he berates himself for the slightest misjudgement of spin, pace or weight on his passes. It might look like affectation and, truth be told, many Bears thought Ronnie’s habit of blaming his bad games on his run of injuries was an “affectation” of a more blatant type.

But this campaign has provided his most consistent and concentrated run of first-team outings, resulting in a steadily increasing level of performance, of which Tannadice was the culmination. In this match he didn’t berate himself once.

It was a joy to watch and, for far longer than the life-time of our video machines, what The Farmer did today will hang in the personal gallery of every Rangers supporter in the world.

And The Gers are still hanging easily onto their eight-point lead at the top of the table after this result. Sellik, kicking-off at the same time against Kilmarnock, clocked up a routine 2-0 win. They still have their games in hand and they’ll play one of them before we welcome them to Ibrox for Rangers’ next SPL fixture - PROBABLY on April 27th!

The games are running out now. This was our final pre-SPL split fixture. I think we might just have managed to make the top six. So, with that worry out the way, it’s now all about winning the championship and, suddenly, that little feat is now all about a mere five games.

Motherwell await in next Saturday’s Scottish Cup semi-final. At the worst, we’ll have a further replay and a final to play in that particular competition but, for the SPL, for the be-all and end-all of our domestic lives, we’re a maximum of five matches from triumph or disaster.

The finishing line is now in sight and that’s just the very time you expect championship challengers to stumble. When those title hopefuls are without two of their key players for the second league game on the trot, and particularly when they were deemed to have struggled in their first game without the influential pair, you could be forgiven for expecting a wee bit of wobbliness.

Perhaps it was just too pessimistic to think we’d drop anything to a side second from the bottom of the table. But, even with their portion of the table and ours about to sail off in different directions, more realistic Bears would remember the ides of Fir Park in December, when we lost to the team currently beneath Dundee United. And Motherwell beat a Rangers side containing both Amo and Bazza.

All we wanted of our team today was another three points in the bag. With our next SPL match “likely” to be against the only team who can stop us winning the title - that’s if Ian McLeod hasn’t brought in Hans Blix to check for weapons of Holy Mass destruction in Lex Gold’s garage - we simply wanted this match won, allowing us to treat next Saturday’s Hampden day out as just that and focus our real drive on the real “cup final”, on April 27th.

Given the way Rangers toiled against Thistle for long spells last Saturday, minus Baz and Renzo, then the way we dismantled Dunfermline so majestically on Wednesday WITH Baz and Renzo, no-one could blame the Bluenoses for happily forgoing the aesthetic pleasures of the Tayside contest. Even more so when we saw the state of the Tannadice pitch. The veritable dunes of sand administered to the three visible blades of grass laid the etymology of the home side’s nickname as bare as the playing surface - no-one could play football on this.

And for ten minutes nobody did. It was head tennis all round. Our defence was altered from Wednesday. Ricksen went back to midfield coz Muscat was returned to right back and Oz returned from his suspension to replace Amo in his - Bob Malcolm’s currently on a run of first-team appearences Amoruso and Moore would die for … well, kill for. This rearguard spent the first ninth of the game gelling through the art of head-tennis. Firstly it took place in our own box, then they pushed up to half-way and by the seventh, eighth and ninth minutes, Rangers were on their seventh, eighth and ninth corners of the game. United just couldn’t cope with Arteta’s neat deliveries (this time he was actually clearing the first man) and our defenders’ aerial bombardments.

So, having won the war of braun and shifted the momentum of play to the right direction, all we needed was one bit of finesse to stick ra baw in ra pokey. On such a pitch we might have expectd a 1-0 win, coming from a deflected pass-back. But Ronald de Boer had other ideas. Other ideas and the other-worldly means by which to execute them.

Like a headlight of class shining through a fog of mediocrity, de Boer began tearing Dundee United to pieces with football so clever it could recite the collected works of Nietzsche while simultaneously working on a cure for cancer and designing the next Lara Croft game.

Eleven Minutes: Everything seems to be clicking with the team as a whole - even Bert Konterman is beginning to make me wonder if I should remove the “even” every time I write “even Bert Konterman was outstanding” - but the number of corners we’ve had without claiming a goal is beginning to worry me. Is it gonnae be one of “those” inverted comma “games”? Lovenkrands sweeps the ball over from the left flank. De Boer pulls away from Gary Bollan at the edge of the United box. The latter, as predicted by the former, doesn’t make the header. Ronnie is in no way surprised when the ball comes to him - he chests it down and hits a low bouncer firmly under Scotland goalie Paul Gallacher. 1-0 and relief all round that we get the opener to settle our nerves.

Eighteen Minutes: Ronnie de Boer was fantastic against Thistle last week, he was on the same kind of form aginst Dunfermline on Wednesday but today he’s on fire. No-one can get near him. His free role is taking him all over the place. Having scored from the “D” area of the box, he suddenly appears down the left flank of the 18-yard strip of white chalk trying to peak through the Sahara-esque top-soil. He whips in the most perfect cross of the entire season - in EUROPE! There are at least three defenders and a goalie between Shota Arveladze and our other ex-Ajax man but de Boer’s delivery exterminates any chance of an interception. Shota is anticipation personified as he bullets home with a blinding close-range header. This is rapture. This football’s stunning.

Forty Five Minutes and Forty Five Seconds. The whistle’s gonnae go for half-time and I haven’t felt this pissed-off about a 2-0 score-line in Rangers’ favour since the same point of the CIS Cup final last month. 2-0 does not justify our dominance of play and goal-scoring chances. United hit the bar as they tried to fight back - slow-mo replays may show Stef actually touched the vicious Wilson effort onto the framework - and this may convince the home-side they’re still in it. But, before the ref can blow for the break, de Boer’s at it again. He instigates the move and is there at the end to receive the final pass from Arteta. It’s a carbon copy of the pass Ronnie played to Mikel for our third goal against The Pars on Wednesday and, to complete the symmetry of reciprocity, Ronnie finishes in exactly the same fashion. A delightfully delicate lob, while the world crashes on top of him, and the ball’s in the net … Ronnie’s on his back … he flips himself up and runs to the Tannadice main stand to soak up the delirium.

Sixty Nine Minutes: The Arabs have showed more of themselves this half - we’ve allowed them to - but de Boer’s not 100% sure the day is absolutely his yet, so he ghosts past twenty eight United players from the right flank inwards - well, it’s the only area he hasn’t done so far - and plays another gem of a ball to Shota, this time on the deck. Arveladze needs to compliment such skill with a suitable finish so the Georgian appears to misjudge the bobble of the turf before rifling the ball straight into the top corner from 12 yards. Stunning. And 4-0.

Seventy One Minutes: Billy Dodds, on as a sub to complete United’s long-list of ex-Gers players on and off the pitch for this one, poaches a consolation from a yard out as we defend a corner badly. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy - even if he did attempt to gouge out Craig Moore’s eye and then have a set-to with Artie Numan and Nando Ricksen. I love Billy Dodds. He’s a scamp.

Seventy Four Minutes: Ronald de Boer is subb’d. As per Wednesday, he milks the applause on his way off. As per Wednesday, if he’d taken half an hour to get off the pitch it still wouldn’t have been long enough to take all the plaudits he deserved.

The year 2053: No-one remembers who won the championship in 2003, but they’re still talking about Ronald de Boer’s master class at Tannadice - aye, that’s when Scottish football was pure quality, by the way.

GERS: Klos, Muscat, Moore, Malcolm, Numan, Ricksen, Arteta (Caniggia 65), Konterman, De Boer (Thompson 74), Arveladze, Lovenkrands (McCann 79).

UNUSED SUBBIES: McGregor, Hughes.

YELLAR KERDED: Arteta, Numan, Thompson.

SCORERS: De Boer 11, Arveladze 18, De Boer 45, Arveladze 69.

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PRIVELEGED REF: Dougeeee McDonald.