Include the shouting - it’s all over (VfB … 1 GERS … 0)

Disappointed? Damn right I am. We all are. But I think I got rid of my real spleen-venting frustration over the last three games in this beautiful/horrible competition. There were plenty little jabs from tightening arteries last night but, as I watched the match on Sky at my sisters, there was no escaping the fact Rangers were effectively out of this competition on match day 2.

The moment that bloke was sent off in Athens, Rangers’ form crashed. We’d been pretty darn sensational in the first two months of the season and then, presented with twenty-odd minutes of football against ten men while already a goal to the good, we looked like we could have lost far more than just the last-minute equaliser Panathinaikos managed.

On the same evening, as we chucked away what should have been three guaranteed points, Stuttgart were taking three downright shocking points off Man United in the South of Germany. That screwed up the plan we’d so brilliantly stumbled upon when defeating VfB at Ibrox in the first round of matches.

The defeats to Manchester United were (a) a tortuos reminder of how poor finishing and one defensive lapse can ruin all the spirit and endeavour in the world and (b) an even harder lesson in how actually turning up is so essential to your team’s performance in football matches.

The manner in which you lose football matches is never satisfactory, no matter how likely defeat was before you started, but no-one was too shocked we took nothing from our bouts with Sir Ferguson’s men. However, all the while, Stuttgart were getting the points they needed to show our Greek failure in even greater stucco relief. Then the injuries to de Boer, Thompson, Arteta, Nerlinger and co piled in on top of continual news of VfB’s extension of their lead at the top of the Bundesliga (”Das Wunder von Stuttgart” indeed). Never has being the only team to beat an opponent seemed such a bad omen.

Our trip to the Gottlieb-Daimler was seen as little more than an invitation to our own execution. We had to win to remain in the Champions League - a draw, as it transpired (We’re STILL the only team to drop points to Panathinaikos), would have guaranteed us third place in the group and the UEFA cup spot that goes with it. In the circumstances of our present personnell crisis, coming so close to achieving the latter was highly commendable. Having had weeks to digest the fact we weren’t good enough to finish second in this group, a knowledge gleaned from a decade of Champions League football at Ibrox, I found myself watching this match with the spirit of near-sickening benevolence and charity to my team which I so hate in the “gallant losers” stories our media is so keen on.

In just such a spirit of even-minded sportsmanship I also have to commend the VfB fans and Sky TV. The first for again exploding the myth that Scotland is the only country in Europe with crowds which can create an atmosphere for 90 minutes and the second for ensuring that atmosphere was duly communicated to TV viewers. Much of Sky’s presentation is dull and even crass but it certainly pisses all over STV when it comes to relaying the noise in the stadium. Every time I heard the home fans singing “who the f**k are Man United?” or echoing “VAAAAAY EFFF BAAAAAY” back and forth across the old Neckar Stadion, I was reminded just what Rangers are really up against in such matches … because I could actually HEAR what we were up against. Ibrox it ain’t (we DO provide one of the best atmosphere’s in Europe) but the Germans don’t lack in the ability to spur their teams on.

You’ll all have seen the game, you’ll all have read the reports in the papers. The Match Reports on this website are more “Match Retorts”. All I have to add is my belief that the better team won on the night but that they really weren’t THAT much better. We matched them physically and this is no meant feat as any team managed by Felix Magath has a reputation for being among the fittest and toughest on the planet.

Much has been made of the timing of the goal - the last kick of the ball in the second minute of first-half injury time. But I have to say there’s no such thing as cruel timing on a football field - there are only lapses of concentration. Maurice Ross and Paolo Vanoli made an arse of clearing a simple aerial free-kick (again, the fact that it wasn’t a free-kick in the first place is irrelevant to how we defended it). Even here, though, McLeish’s post-match comments - “They should knock their team-mate out the way in that situation - even if it means injuring a colleague or themselves” - softened the pain by showing the manager’s attitude predicts and embellishes that of the fans.

Klos was left with no chance on this occasion although he had performed his usual minor miracle to deny his countrymen earlier.

Our one near-thing came when Nando went through on their keeper. At first I thought our midfielder-again-for-the-night had failed to even get his shot in, but a different angle showed Hildebrand had matched the quality of Klos’s vital save. Rickers could have done no more.

Ball and Zurab were superb considering they were dragged off the treatment table to play and Henning Berg is just bloody magic. Capucho came more into the game in the second half as we dominated for long spells but, despite now being able to see what he’s trying to achieve, I feel he’s still a waste of space for far too much of the play. With my hindsight specs on I can see Michael Mols could’ve swung the result if he’d been on the pitch longer. He had the beating of his opponents and I thought, for a moment, he’d come back to Germany on Champions League duty to spectacularly eradicate the memory of his worst ever injury.

The filthy tackles were going in last night - Tiffert and Meissner being the worst offenders - but we were doing damage of our own and how great to see Peter Lovenkrands swinging about on the turf to up-end a white-shirted foe. The Dane didn’t do us any good by failing to read the situation more cleverly and by then working himself into a frenzy of dissent when his craftier oponent made the situation a free-kick to VfB. But the attitude was good.

Unfortunately, as we’ve already said, attitude isn’t enough at this level, especially when our best players are dropping like flies - flies with tendon strains. But, at UEFA Cup level and against a bunch of duffers like Panathinaikos, last night’s atitude will be more than enough. It’s already established that any old sh*te can get to the UEFA Cup final so, while the Champions League dream goes back on ice for another season, we can still wake up to European glory in 2003/2004.

GERS: Klos, Ross (Ostenstad 70), Berg, Khizanishvili, Ball, Hughes, Vanoli (Mols 55), Capucho, Ricksen, Arveladze, Lovenkrands (Burke 80).

UNUSED SUBBIES: McGregor, Emerson, Gibson, Smith.

YELLARED: Hughes, Lovenkrands.

DEUTSCHER DUDES and BARMY BEARS: 50,348

SCHIEDSRICHTER: Manuel Enrique Mejuto Gonzalez (Spain) … aye, jist shows ye - we get nuffin when thi ref’s a pyoor KAFFFFLIK, by the way!!