Who The F*ck are Man United???

Nip into the feedback section at the foot of the previous article and you’ll see myself, the editor of this here footballerish website, having a very sober and even-minded discussion with a very pleasant and articulate Celtic fan.

We’re both talking, Peter and I, about the shortcomings, real and percieved, in our respective teams. There’s none of that “we’re the best - Ran/Tic are pure sh*te!” nonsense. Because, you see, that’s what happens when you reach a certain stage in life, when you come to a certain maturity of understanding, both of yourself and your loved ones.

Gradually, as it were, you learn that a knowledge of the faults in the parties you feel most affection for is, far from being disloyal, actually quite a healthy thing. Just as I now openly confess my father is not, in fact, as handsome as Brad Pitt on a good day (though, if my dad ever lowered himself to wearing a hair-piece, he’d run that American ponce pretty damn close!) I have also fully recognised the utter futility of pretending your team is the best in the world when, plainly, it ain’t.

Now, this is a psychological compromise Real Madrid or Brazil fans often don’t need to experience but for 99% of football fandom, we can either grow up with our attitudes and therefore live more easily with our love of the team which first won our heart OR we can continue to act like fekin numpties - point-blank refusing to ever concede our team is ever fairly beaten - until no-one will ever again want to chat to us about the sport we actually live to chat about.

So, I can say Rangers played shite without ever feeling I’ve let down The Rangers or myself because, well, when they need encouragement I give them encouragement. I never slag them off in the stadium and I never slag them off when some rival punter is simply taking the p*ss. I’ve spent more money and time than most watching The Rangers - I’ve got the stripes. People who know me know that when I say something critical about Rangers it’s BECAUSE I love them so much ( … or because I’m substituting a cheap, easy contrary opinion for genuinely worthwhile insight … but we’ll leave that at the moment).

However, this “self-knowledge” does not always display itself in the smug, cardigan-wearing, cocoa-drinking, bordering-on-straightforward bl**dy-pessimism tones of resignation which have made the last few paragraphs you’ve just read about as stimulating as being sat in the middle of the Govan during a Scottish Cup replay against Berwick Rangers. Ye see, troops, WHEN YE GET TO MY AGE there’s also an element of stamina and pacing oneslef involved.

Like the married man who knows he can’t keep up the ten-times-a-night lust of the honeymoon and starts, down the years, to save it for weekends, then Sundays, then birthdays (his and hers) and then just Christmas morning … on a leap year … with the lights off … I have to save my best performances as a Rangers fan for the big ocassions. Big performances demand a certain amount of focus - or blinker-wearing, if you will - and that can only be achieved through raising some very high levels of passion from within.

Our big performances, as in the aforementioned, potentially-fatal-for-Yours-Bluely analogy, are easily produced as youngsters: We’ll do anything to anything as one Ben Elton creation famoulsy said. Be it Albion Rovers in a pre-season friendly or the 56-year old wo/man with the wooden leg who lives at the end of the street, when yer a teenage Bluenose you are UP FOR ANYTHING!

As time goes by, however, one becomes more discerning - even if the imagination often says we ain’t - first through being sated (an entire league programme of 90-minute singing can only be done once in a life-time: The amount of alcohol needed to try it for a second season would kill you before the winter break .. just as the amount of booze needed to make that 56-year-old look attractive a second time tends to reduce your capacity to … well, you know what I’m saying) and then through the sheer physical reality of bodily decay.

As we get older, it’s all about saving it for the magical occasions and when those occasions arrive, us old stagers whip out our HUGE experience and show the young uns how it’s done. Ibrox, this Wednesday night, will - it’s fair to say - be one of those magical occasions … perhaps one of the most magical in Rangers’ history. Ah, The Rangers - at times like these, like these massive Champions League matches - when they slip down that tunnel and out onto the bluest green grass you’ve ever seen, my team looks more beautiful to me than any team in the world.

When it comes to it, when it really really counts, the True Blues have the tank-full of juice primed and ready. We’ll be simmering for an hour before kick-off (from a steady heat which ignited with the draw for Group E) and we’ll explode when the Teds enter the arena, alongside a certain Manchester United.

Two European Cups, one Cup-Winners’ Cup, one World Club Championship, one European Super Cup, fifteen English Championships, three Doubles - one as part of an even more glorious treble, George Best, Dennis Law, Bobby Charlton, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Nobby Stiles, Duncan Edwards, Sir Matt Busby, Sir Alex Ferguson, Paul McGrath, Eric Cantona, Beckham, Scholes, Keane, Butt and 67,000 every home game. My god they’re one of the gretest teams on this planet - even Andy Goram played for them - BUT …

… but at 7:45 pm on the 22nd October 2003, me, you and every other man, woman and child in Red, White and Blue will let the team from Old Trafford know that, for us, there’s no club, no team, no set of players more worthy of maximum veneration than the men from Ibrox stadium, Govan, Glasgow.

Love doesn’t have to be blind but when you mix it with passion it can’t be anything else. Startlingly one-tracked, total, pure, all-consuming, raging, lustful love. You know what I’m saying, troops: For those gloriously precious moments between the ref leading the teams out and the ref blowing for the start of the game we all share an ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE that the best Football Club on the planet really IS … The Rangers.