EXCLUSIVE: Gers fan DOESN’T want Bayern to beat ce**ic

Yes, most of us wish to see our most despised enemy papped oot the Champions League every bit as soon as The Gers are, if not before, but there’s a very special reason why I want the horrible hooped ones to avoid defeat in their home match with Bayern Munchen.

Because, ye see, I want THE RANGERS to have the sweet, sweet pleasure of taking wee Fartin Martin’s 2-and-a-bit-year unbeaten home record.

In 2002 Eck managed to snatch away the smelly ones’ chances of a 100% SPL home record - in their very last league game at Park-ned that season - ensuring The Teddy Bears remain the only side in Scotland ever to win every one of their championship fixtures on their home soil in a single season (we actually won all our away games too but that’s another story).

Now, by going unbeaten at The piggery since Ajax p*ssed all over them in the second leg of a Champions League qualifier in 2001, the smelly tic have set themselves up for an even bigger fall (see how I turn a fantastic achievement into a reason for possible Rangers mirth?! - all the feedback from the more blinkered sellik fans on this site has finally had an effect on me. I’m fighting short-sighted fire with myopic fire) and it just HAS to be the Govan XI who provide the banana skin.

Apart from anything else, the way our season’s going, we NEED to win at parkhead next time up. If we’re still five points behind in the championship race when we next make that trip to the dark side of town, then I’ll be quite happy. A further three points that day will restore my faith fully. But I can’t see us, on our current form, still being as close as five points come the festive period. Eck is in the thick of his first bad patch as Gers gaffer and the one thing which could lift spirits around Ibrox is the only thing he’s yet to achieve in matters domestic - oversee a Rangers win at parkhead.

Although Chris Sutton went about doing all he could to destroy it, celtic were left with their pride last season, despite winning nothing. Their stunning ability to see any Rangers victory or any celtic loss as being caused only by a world-wide masonic conspiracy (even if the referee’s Slovakian and related to one of your ex-players!) may remove any chance we ever had of respecting them as an orgnisation but it keeps their team feeling worthier than their rivals. It gives their players a psychological head start. The fact they beat us more times than we beat them in the league last season and the fact they did this while reaching a European final, has made it easy for celtic to retain a conviction of on-field superiority over The Gers. In effect, they see Scotish football in 2002/2003 as a freak result - only celtic could dismiss an entire domestic season because it didn’t go their way, but there you have it.

To dent their dangerous sense of self-worth - which in a footballing sense is entirely merited and which Rangers have recently augmented both by allowing them to win the opening Old Firm derby of the current season and then dropping crazy points at Livvy and Motherwell - we have to come up with something spectacular. We have to come up with a move, a plan, a ploy, a RESULT which will shake their very foundations again, just as we did on Scottish Cup final day 2002. The only thing left to do is beat them on their own patch.

It’s been far too long since we last enjoyed that most satisfying of results, the parkhead win. Rod Wallace’s peach in the rain on a mad March evening in the year 2000. It was a result which effectively sewed up the title that night and it’s always been a result which lets us know our team really is in business. Win at parkhead and we’re usually beating our main rivals for the championship. Unlike celtic victories at Ibrox, quite frequent even when it was Aberdeen or Hearts providing the main challenge to our nine-in-a-row championship aspirations, Rangers wins at parkhead are almost always a stamp of true authority. I can only remember us beating them there once when our club wasn’t actually enjoying a period of domination over everyone else: Remember Alex Miller’s swerving volley into the top corner, in front of the Bears in 1980? Who can forget it?! Jim Bett got the other in a 2-1 win at the start of the 80/81 season but it was just one of many false dawns at that time. We’d been bad for more than a year at that point and, the fact we didn’t win again at parkhead for nine years was a direct reflection of everything Rangers did until Souness arrived.

That I’m talking about beating celtic at parkhead the day before we play Kilmarnock at Rugby Park is a direct reflection of how Scottish football has become even more of a duopoly in this period than at anytime since the Second World War. Leaving the home of our derby rivals with all three points is now, more than ever, about more than just “local pride” - it’s about showing the whole country who’s boss. Rangers are singularly failing to do that at the moment and, while an improvement in our current dreadful form is of immediate necessity and will be truly heart-warming to see, sustaining our long-term superiority in this country will only be achieved with the best away win of them all. Suspending their pride from the rope of this unbeaten home record, only gives celtic farther to fall if it’s The Teds who come along and snap it!

While our players might not look capable of this feat at the moment, there’s a lovely poetry of inevitability about sellik’s very creditable home record of the last few seasons … and not in the way the jungle jamess and janices think: Whenever we, The Gers, were unbeaten at home for any length of time, you know only too well who would end the sequence. They did it to us last season, didn’t they - even though they eventually won nowt. Similairly, when we went 44 games unbeaten in all competitions in the 92/93 treble-winning-goal-away-from-the-Champions-League-Final season it was at Breezeblock Boulevard, against one of the worst smellik teams of all time that our record crashed and burned by 2 goals to 1.

Scotland were the first team to beat England after they won the World Cup … Barcelona were the first team to ever knock Real Madrid out the European Cup … Rangers were the first team to beat Celtic after the smell won the European Cup … Man City relegated Man United … Yes: There’s clearly a sick little law in football which says that the higher your club flies, the more inevitable it is they’ll have their balloon punctured by the boy who lives across the back door. There’s no doubt celtic are an awesome side at home - their performances in Europe over the last few seasons have been a credit to Scottish football, even though so many of their fans and so many twats amongst our support apparently want to cheer against Scotland. But I can take no real pleasure in seeing celtic doing well in Europe. (by the way, WELL DONE, HEARTS!! A BRILLIANT result the other night at Bordeaux - now THAT game I DID enjoy. Congratulations, Jambos!)

The only thought which sustains me as those buggers rack up the home wins is that it increases the likelihood of The Gers taking all three points from the Mecanno dome on January 3rd.

So, anyone who wants to hold the hooped herberts to a draw in the East End of Glasgow between now and Hogmanay is perfectly entitled to to do so. Dunfermline, Partick Thistle, Bayern Munich, Livingston, whoever you are. Score as many goals as your green-and-white opponents, lose as many goals as them. Draw, draw, draw with the soap-dodgers as much as you’d like. Take your two points with the blessing of Rangers@openfootie - enjoy them, use them wisely - but no-one, no-one, NO-ONE … absolutely no team is allowed to beat celtic at parkhead … until the first Old Firm derby of 2004.