Regrets - I’ve had a few // We really could - have done Man U …

I’ve never been one for avoiding the harsher realities of football matches. There’s so much pap fed to the followers of the game these days, by a media which is far more interested in injecting every game with any flavour which is most likely to sustain the interest of their biggest market than actually describing the game honestly, that we have to step back from the sentimentality, hype and often downright racism which sky, the BBC, ITV and the tabloids feed us.

Well, we must do this only if we’re the kind of football fan who wants to get a realistic grip on just exactly how well, poorly or otherwise their team played. Often it’s painful to acknowledge the rankness of your side’s display and following Rangers in the Scottish set-up, that admission can often come in the wake of a 2 or 3 goal victory. Conversely, following Rangers in Europe presents plenty of scenarios where we have to admit our players did themselves proud in defeat.

The emotion, of course, can only be avoided for so long. True supporters find it hard to look at their team with a cold, objective eye and so it should be. Love, as we’ve said this week, should be blind when you’re actually at the match. The last thing I’d ever want is to be part of a Rangers crowd which was making its own players feel uptight and thus hindering their performance. After the game is the time for analysis and/or criticism and, having spent the night cheering Rangers on til I was literally hoarse (ignorant workmates today enquired about a sudden flu bug which seemed to have hit me and me only) and continually stifling my increasing frustration at our squandered chances, I “exploded” into a wee petulant rant as soon as I returned home and got onto the PC.

Hardly anyone will have read it, even fewer people will have understood it and almost nobody will have detected the conveyance of emotions as raw as that which I claim to have been going through at the time - basically, I cannae write fur toffee. But all day I’ve spoke to friends, family and less ignorant workmates and many have given me that “Och, yer being a bit sair on them - they were playin MANCHESTER UNITED after all” look. So I’m forced to reasses my opinion that The Gers blew it.

And I’m actually forced to come to the cyclical conclusion that the emotion attached to last night’s game is, in fact, an intrinsic part of any full analysis of the events which took place in Glasgow on Wednesday 22nd October 2003.

I went for a post-work, pre-match pint in The Crystal Palace on Jamaica Street. Not a big fan of geting legless before a game if I can help it because I want to remember every detail of the match - no more than a few jars for me in the run up to a game but I’m happy to get totally mingin’ afterwards - but this time I actually needed a couple of bevvies to CALM ME DOWN enough to enjoy the evening. Soon as I walked into this boozer I could sense something different. Not a Man U scarf in sight but the place was packed with sleekit-looking beggars in Burburrey baseball caps and Stone Island jaikets. One Bear started a wee Gers song and the place erupted into one Coronation-Street-accented Mancunian deluge of threat-filled lyrics.

Always liked mixing with rival fans on European nights but not this mob. I downed my Stella and headed up to George Square, away from the Crystal Palace and the police vans outside The Arches. Around Central Station was a Man U area. For once I was made to feel a little bit intimidated on my own patch. This was in keeping with the whole novelty atmosphere of Rangers facing the one team in Britain who’re bigger than us on all counts. Fans of Brechin, Kilmarnock, Stranraer, Aberdeen etc can all begin laughing now - finally a Rangers fan experiences what it’s like to think “Glory-huntin’ bastards” … and he’s not refrying to the part-timers in his OWN support.

Liverpool are the European cup masters but Manchester United are the only British side to have won the Champions League incarnation of club football’s greatest prize. I’d spent all week hoping Rangers would simply avoid a massive defeat. The looming presence of their punters in our town and the complete disregard they obviously had for the reputation of Rangers in particular and Scottish football as a whole, made me wish there was some way The Gers could do a bit more than “keep it respectable”.

Then we had the much anticiptaed “Blue Sea of Ibrox”. Even the frustrated-operatic warblings of the three tenors (I don’t hate the guys becuase they do Scotland matches - I hate them because they’re shite and do more to kill an atmosphre than generate one) couldn’t interfere with probably-mmm-maybe…dunno for sure .. PERHAPS the best tunnel-to-kick-off atmosphere I’ve experienced at The Brox. Forcing us all to learn a new-old song worrked better than I’d anticipated and the blue placards looked sensational.

What it all did was remind us to our very bones that Rangers are massive. In the build-up to the game I’d spouted on about that place within even the most even-minded fan where, on big occassions, he’s conviced his team are simply the best in the world, no mater how sh*ite they actually are. That all came back to me last night as I roared and bellowed The Gers onto the park - in a moment of clarity I realised that the atmosphere at Ibrox on these big Euro nights cannot lie. It’s infused with history and a knowledge of just how great Rangers have been, are and can be in the future. You simply don’t get atmospheres like the one at Ibrox last night if the punters generating it don’t have solid foundations for their hope. That hope may be expressed in hysterical terms but it’s got to start somewhere - and the root of the madness which met Man U as they crept out that tunnel is the fact Rangers ARE one of the greatest clubs in the world.

Man! - we’ve got 40,000 season-ticket holders; We have one of the most beautiful stadiums on the planet - a magnificent fusion of scale, grandeur, modernity, tecnhical genius and sheer flippin aesthetic beauty; we have the best training facilities in the country, we’ve had some of the game’s most brilliant players wear our colours, we hold the British record for the attendance at a league match, we hold the world record for the amount of championships won, we’ve been in three European finals - four if you count the Super Cup - we’ve played in the Champions League more times than any British team OTHER than Man United and we’ve twice reached the semis of the European Cup/Champiosn League as well as a Fairs Cup semi in the sixties. Bl**dy hell - we ARE massive. How could I forget how HUGE Rangers actually are.

The DISGRACE is that the rest of Europe don’t realise just how big we are. And why is that? Why do Rangers get only the slightest nod of recognition from your average Calcio, fusball, le foot, footie, futball or Voetball fan in the streets of Milan, Munich, Marseille, Manchester, Madrid or Maastricht (The sooner Maastricht win the Eredivisie and a couple of European cups, the sooner that sentence’ll have a better ring to it!)? Because it’s been so bl**dy long since we won anything in Europe! And why do we not win anything in Europe? Because we NEVER TAKE OUR BLOODY CHANCES!!!

We can’t have all the fervour of expectation - the massive displays of our lust for more international Rangers glory and then go away feeling chuffed that Man U only beat us 1-0. Yeah, yeah, yeah - Man U were playing within themselves to a certain extent and I’ve heard it said all day that “they could have scored another one if they’d needed to”. But at no time did Rangers MAKE them need to score another … and if Man U were so comfy within themselves how did Lovenkrands get clean through on goal, why was it not just us who were clearing the ball of our own line??

There’s no escaping all this ranting from me is just another manifestation of post-defeat disappointment but we have to ensure our disappointment takes into account what exactly happened. Disappointment and regret can be turned into a positive force if handled correctly. Sod the “gallant losers” crap. We’re Rangers and in our domestic scene we’re used to being slagged to bits if we drop a single point and given no worthwhile appreciation if we win. Lets make that the case in Europe too.

I’m not exaggerating the number of clear cut chances we had last night - it was perhaps four at the most - but the Rangers support, management and players must fully understand the importance of those chances. They weren’t a tcket to say “aye - we might have got something there”. Those misses were a billboard-sized sign that Rangers CAN, COULD and SHOULD have taken points from one of the tournament favourites. We could have made the continent sit up and take notice once again - we could have boosted our own club’s belief in it’s right to the biggest prizes.

If we’d taken a few more of those chances in the last ten years then we’d probably have won the bl**dy thing outright in 1993 and still be a among the favourites for the trophy each year to date.

When you get that close you show you have the ability. When you don’t take the chances, you show a lack of belief in just how big a club you’re playing for. I want to see the day when Rangers come down the tunnel for a Champions League match and there’s nothing but a ripple of polite applause from the punters because the group stage is just part of the process - not the end in itself. Juventus got 17,000 for their match with Real Sociedad on Tuesday night - because the league set-up is nothing but the preliminaries for them. We must believe we can make it likewise at Ibrox.

Still … imagine if we could scrape a draw at Old Trafford … I mean, they might have a few guys sent off in the first minute … ye never know … and if we got everyone behind the ball for ninety four minutes …!

PS - I know he’s blamed for the goal but - Nando Ricksen - credit where it’s due: He hit Keane three times AND nutmegged him!