Man U@Ibrox. How do you snap a yardstick?

Well, I listed their more immediate achievements in last night’s rant (see “Who The F*ck are Man United?”, below) . The Old Trafford media-darlings have an unarguably impressive back-catalogue of trophies both English and European. So they come to face Rangers as one of the world’s most famous and successful teams. Nach’ we’re gonnae be a bit excitable.

The extent of Manchester United’s fame, however, is the one incalculable aspect of their existence. There’s no denying they’re in the top ten. It’s less certain they’re one of the planet’s three best-known clubs. But the fact that, despite the best doodlings of all the accountants ITV and the BBC can muster, there’s no way anyone can say for sure which club is DEFINITELY the most famous in the world is the straw at which the English media grasp when trying to claim the Red Devils are the biggest thing in soccer’s global goldfish tank …

Other teams have bigger stadia than Man U (eg Hertha Berlin, Borussia Dortmund, Roma/Lazio, Barcelona, Stuttgart). Other teams have won more trophies, both domestic and European, than Man U (eg Liverpool, Internazionale of Milan) and, even accounting for the Busby Babes, other clubs have histories which are just as tragi-romantic as that emanating from Old Trafford (eg Torino, Dynamo Kiev). With the possible exception of the tragedy, Real Madrid and Milan beat Manchester United on every score just mentioned.

So why-oh-why are we reserving a particular amount of euphoric anticipation for this mid-week’s visitors when, in the last decade we’ve had Juventus, Bayern, Marseille, Dortmund and Parma coming to our place on Euro business?

Simple: Familiarity, in’t it.

As much as the media may try to depress us by continually bleating about Scottish Football living in the shadow of its superior English counterpart, yer real football fan from north of the border has grown up LOVING the proximity of the sassenach game. Remember the days when Sportscene, on a Saturday night (!), would show you a Premier League game, chat about it, look through all the Scotish results of the day and then we’d be off to Match of The Day in London to plunder the EBC’s highlights of the old English First Division?

Well, I do - and it was Soooooperb. Now we have Sky and ITV’s coverage of the Premiership but it’s really just an extension of what Scottish football fans have been enjoying since the days they first picked up newspapers to read how that traitorous mercenary who left Queens Park/Dumbarton/Third Lanark to play for Newcastle/Preston/Burnley was getting on. We Scots have easy access to the league’s oldest and most exciting (remember - “exciting”, as it’s commonly understood, does NOT correlate directly with “quality”) league championship. We’re football lovers before we’re patriots so we often know far more about life in the English top flight than we do about the machinations of the Bell’s First division.

So we Jocks are all infused with imagery from the English game and, despite the satellite revolution (and channel 4’s groundbreaking coverage of Serie A) which now means we can watch weekly action from all the best leagues in the world, we still find it much easier to dip into the domestic scene which is the biggest for those speaking English. I want to improve my German, Italian, French and Spanish (ie I want to learn how to speak a single word in any of them!) but it’s always gonnae be so much easier to read, watch and listen the work of English journalists … and they tend to cover the English league.

When I were a nipper, my wildest fitbaw fantasies were to see Rangers beating Liverpool, in the European Cup, at Anfield - usually with me scoring the winner in front of the Kop. Because, from age seven to age fourteen, I watched Liverpool win four European Cups and twice as many English championships … all on TV. They were the best in Europe and the best in our living room, on a regular basis.

Manchester United are NOT the best in Europe but they realistically could be by the end of the season and they now are the best in my living room on a regular basis. The red Scousers may have the best British record in the European Cup overall but the red Mancs have the best British Champions League record by a mile and it’s the Champions League which, if I’m not at Ibrox seeing it happen, I’m watching live on the box. If Man U are playing in the Champions League - and they have ben for the last ten years - then it’s live on your telly. Up until this season, you didn’t even need to have a satellite dish to watch every Man U Champions League game live.

As a fan of the world game, I know there are players better and teams better than Man U but as a guy who’ll switch on a live game and watch it til the end, I have to admit Manchester United have been the best side I’ve watched on a regular basis on my telly.

The Liverpool side of the eighties and late seventies is the most succesful I’ve watched on a regular basis but we only ever saw highlights in those days, barring the Eurpean Cup final itself. The football Arsenal played during the calendar year 2002 is the best year of football from any team I’ve ever watched on the telly but it only lasted a year. Rangers run in the 92/93 Champions League was the single-most exciting football experience of my life to date … but so much of that was to do with my slight bias towards rangers. Juventus’ defeat of Real Madrid in last season’s Champions League semi-final second leg was probably the best single team performance I’ve ever seen on my TV … but it was just one match (and it didn’t feature Man U so we heard nothing about it after the final whistle!).

No, it’s Manchester United who have played the (wait for this) “biggest aggregate best football” I’ve ever watched. Och, ye know whit ah mean. We see so much of the buggers on the box these days and they’ve played so well - undoubtedly the best side in Britain for the last ten years - that, love them or hate them, they’ve seeped into the bloodstream of any true British footie fan.

Yes, they have our ex-player as a manager and he was the boss of our boss when Aberdeen used to shaft us regularly in the eighties. we’ve read all that in the papers, heard it on the radio, seen it on TV til we’re sick to death of it - but that’s the Man U roadshow for you. I have no love for Sir Alex Ferguson and I have no love for his current employers but I have unflinching admiration for the achievmnets of both. The real flavour this week comes from finally seeing the team of my heart come face-to-face with the team of Britain’s collective footballing consciousness.

TV and reality finally merge. I’ve watched Man U in the flesh at Ibrox in a friendly - and in the premiership at home v Wimbledon. But both these games were before they won the Champions League (on my wedding day incidentally) to go truly global once again and the game against Rangers was, just as I said, a mere friendly. But Manchester United, in the thick of high-stakes all-or-nothing competition is what the UK football TV boom of the nineties was built on. It ain’t Juventus, Liverpool, Real Madrid or Arsenal who Man U take on tomorrow, live in front of the entire British Isles - it’s THE RANGERS. Finally the only element ever missing from my interest in a Man U game - really CARING - will be slotted into place. My head says “a draw would be a miracle” but every other part of me says “I hope we fu**ing SLAUGHTER them”. I want a result so bad, because I know they’re so good … and SO WELL KNOWN.

Christ, despite the fact he once popped up in the Broomloan during an Old Firm game (I could see him from my seat in the Govan as all the smellies sang “keano” - my favourite non-Rangers player in the British scene over the last six years or so is undoubtedly Roy Keane. I read his “book” during my summer hols down in England. On the way home from Strartford we stopped off in Newcastle and I drove round St Jmes’ park again (Was in it during Euro 96, just as I’ve seen Man U at Old Trafford against Wimbledon , Aston Villa at home, Liverpool at home etc etc - the English game is a huge romantic part of my imaginative life) and then, the next day, before going along to Ibrox for our 5-2 demolition of Hibs, I watched Roy Keane single-handedly tear that Newcastle team to bits at that same stadium despite the Magpies being backed by - does this sound familiar? - 50,000 of the most passionate fans in the land. As a Rangers fan I’m suposed to hate a Republic of Ireland international who hinted he might play for Celtic one day. As a footbal fan I just see Keane as one of the greats. A guy who writes a book saying “I’m the best at getting the job done” and then goes and proves it again - just in case you thought he was overstating himself.

In less than 24 hours I’ll be calling him, and his distinguished team-mates, every foul name I can possibly think of - I will genuinely loathe Keane tonight - and if he plays as he can and does the damage he can at Ibrox, I’ll probably bin that book and curse the guy every time I see him on my TV thereafter. And he hopes I do.

We, as Rangers fans, think we’re hated by everyone. That’s not even true in Scotland. Oh man, I hope I live to see the day when Rangers are as hated as Man United. We can start working on that right now - what do you say, Mr McLeish?!

Since 1992, European Cup football has meant I’ve either been at Ibrox watching Rangers in the Champions League or I’ve been sat at home watching Man United live on the telly in the Champions League. Tonight, both “habits” finally merge and it all feels a wee bit cathartic. There’s no reason Man U can’t go on and better Juventus’ feat of inflicting our heaviest ever home defeat on us but there’s also that chance Lord Alex McLeish might take tonight’s heady mix of admiration, love, hatred, ex-players, ex-bosses, my couch, my TV and my blue bucket seat in the Govan Rear and explode it in the face of British football’s Status Quo.

Oh, and talking of Staus Quo - Ibrox WILL be rocking as it has never rocked before.

COME ON THAAA TEEEDDDDYYYY BEEEEAAAARRRRRSSSSSSSS!!!!