Momentously bad (them … 1 Us … 0)

In fact, we have. We’ve played for over 12 months now without managing as much as a draw against Celtic. Six on the bounce we’ve lost to them - something which last occurred during the First World War: And talking of disasters which’ll traumatise you for years to come …

Anything positive we could have achieved today would still have been far too little, far too late. To be entering an Old Firm game with only the avoidance of a whitewash as a tangible target was humiliation enough. The real damage was done in the four previous Old Firm clashes this season, when there was something silver to play for.

However, while no Bear would have had any serious rights to genuinely boast or gloat over a Rangers win in this final derby of 2004/2005, it was the less visible but all the more important prize at steak today. It’s corny to the point of tacky but pride is a footballing commodity more valuable than any silverware. The players get to lift the cups but for every team the real honour is granted to them by the supporters - we’re the ones who know exactly what the men in those Red and Black socks are representing, we’re the ones who make the trophies worth winning. Our love never fades but, on days like today, the pride can become an open wound.

I couldn’t preview this game with any designs on rubbing Celtic’s face in a potential third straight defeat at Parkhead - as far as this season goes, only a four or five-goal Rangers victory could have put any serious dampner on what’s been a marvelous campaign by O’Neill’s men.

But we’ve had just as many marvellous seasons, in fact slightly more than Celtic down the years. If anything’s certain about Old Firm life - if, in particular, the last six or seven years of domestic competitions have shown us anything, it’s this: No one half of the Old Firm is dominant for long and no one half is in the doldrums for long. On the rare occasions when this rule is broken - for example, Celtic win nine titles in a row in the sixties and seventies - the other side of Glasgow’s shiniest fitbaw coin will even things up almost as sure as every action must produce an equal and opposite reaction - so Rangers duly go ahead and win nine titles on the trot in the eighties and nineties. For the most part, in Scotland anyway, anything Celtic can do, we can also do - slightly more frequently but not fantastically better.

We won a treble in 1999 and everyone thought Dick Advocaat was the greatest. Two years later, Celtic are winning the treble and everyone thinks Martin O’Neill is the new messiah. Two years later - well, yeah - you know exactly how many trophies Alex McLeish won in his first full season in charge. It’s almost the law of Scottish football - one which a quick glance at yer stats books will confirm is rarely broken: There shall be Rangers and there shall be Celtic and everyone else shall sit back and be bored by their century-long game of leap-frog.

So while I find it very hard to watch Celtic coasting the Championship, I know Rangers have won it just as convincingly in the recent past and will do so again in the very near future. Not winning trophies is a concern for Rangers - always - but history has proved we never go hungry for long. The financial carve up of the SPL by our seperated brethren and ourselves ensures Europe is the only arena where we can judge our true worth. Nah, what really hurts you about Rangers in Scotland are the singular, rare Old Firm moments when REAL history is made by the opposition, when what seems like a many-precedented twist in the Old Firm rivalry slowly becomes an indellible notch in our rivals’ big stick … the one they’ll use to beat us with from now til we turn the tables.

Like one of those scenes in a Soap Opera or a bad TV movie, where the recently widowed heroine is stoically keeping up appearances for the public at the funeral but then goes home and breaks down as force of habit sees her pouring an extraneous second bedtime cuppa, the full enormity of this scoreline will take a while to sink in.

Back at the end of 97/98 I was too busy being grateful to Waldo and his troops for giving us so many years of success and at least equalling the Nine to be overly concerned about finishing as runners-up for a change. But Losing ten-in-a-row now gets worse every year for me. Even when we win the title I know it’s gonnae be the best part of a decade of almost impossible consistency before we can get that chance back. The pain I didn’t feel six years ago has been kicking my gonads ever since.

Similairly, we were under no illusions that Celtic were the favourites for this latest derby match and we’re fully used to them scoring late winners so you may currently be feeling as I do - that you could see it coming. But I also know that as the immediate detritus ebbs away and the hacks move onto next week’s story (Thompson slapped Ricksen? So what! Why didn’t Nado just slap him back instead of all this moaning and hoo-hah), we’ll be left with the long-term gash in our club’s history. This was a black, black day. It was final confirmation of what’s been threatening to happen all season - we’ve become bad to a historic degree. The highs are many at Rangers but today we capped a new low.

Older Celtic fans will have found particular enjoyment in the fact they managed to secure five victories in one season over their oldest, most hated foes. That we allowed them to equal our 1963/64 record pains me no end. Today became the most important Old Firm game of the season for Yours Bluely and not because of any “the next game’s always the most important” instinct. There was plenty myopia involved, yes, but not that type.

For years to come I know that our failure to hold on for a draw or - had Stephen Thompson not temporarily forgot he was a centre-forward with aerial ability - even a win in this last “meaningless” encounter with the hooped horrors this season, will fester within for as long as it takes for Rangers to set a new record of domination over the side from Glasgow’s east end. There are more than the Rangers players on show today who should be bearing the responsibility of this shameful situation. Celtic are a better team than us this campaign - no-one’s expecting our men to perform miracles in EVERY Old Firm encounter and O’Neill’s knocked far better teams, and at least one bigger club than Rangers out of Europe with the side we faced today. But I’ve seen far poorer Rangers sides - ones which struggled to avoid fourth place never mind challenge for the title - running themselves into the ground rather than let That Lot granny us. It’s a genuine fu**ing disgrace.

Even in trying to remain objective about a Rangers performance my gut tells me to curse right down to hell to for what it failed to do, I find that the positives too only damn us with faint praise. Rangers actually defended quite well and played more impressively than could have been expected in light of our previous displays this season. To admit this, to concede that watching Celtic win about a milion corners in the second half alone against our two serious chamces in the whole game, is as as shameful as the concession of the record set by Baxter and chums forty years ago.

Imagine if the Rangers of Jimmy Millar, Ralph Brand etc had played at parkhead as the present incumbents of the Gersey did today. What if the team of Goram, Gough, McCoist and Hateley had produced the few moments of real sparkle and astonishingly slow front play which Alex McLeish’s latest XI mustered on Saturday 8th May 2004 - we’d have been astonished, shocked, disgusted even. Yet some want us to believe this was an improvement for Rangers today. That it actually was is an even greater slagging than the whitewash.

I’m being harsh in one respect. The Nine-In-A-Row Rangers did often spend the vast majority of Parkhead derbies defending Celtic corners. Today Frank and Zurab did tremendously well for the most part and were even outperformed by young Alan Hutton who, I think, had his best game yet for The teds. Vanoli was too determined to concede silly free-kicks for no footbaling reason to get pass marks but overall the Rangers defence - Klos was tremendous for ninety-odd minutes - was doing a reasnonable impression of Goram, Gough, Brown etc. The problem is this current Rangers team had no idea what to do when we broke out of defence.

There were a few moments of good, inventive play in the first half and Ricksen, while walking the disciplinary tightrope as only he can, was having his best Old Firm game yet. Arteta was particularly loathe to get involved in heavy tackles today - bit of a hindrance when wearing a Rangers jersey on this particular pitch! - and should have been sent off for a stupid swing at Pearson but his biggest crime was perpetuating his habit of walking away from play with his head down, in a wee huff, every time a decision went against him.

This lacadazical trait was witnessed a few times at the back but mostly it cost us up front. Thompson’s lack of pace was almost exceeded by Mols’ sluggishness and having praised Stephen for his energy and commitment in recent outings, he was a major disappointment today. Maybe the service wasn’t there but as that Nine-in-a-Row team demonstrated, when you go to Parkhead it’s all about concentration and belief.

Wee Burkey was comfortably contained for long spells by the Celtic rearguard but when he did break loose it was with real purpose. Laudrup used to demonstrate just how much damage you can cause with one or two moments of freeedom against Celtic but Thompson and Mols lacked the conviction, pace and I think basic fitness to make anything of the one or two openings the wee Ginger manufactured.

Walter Smith’s Rangers knew, more than anything, that you need a goal aginst Celtic on their own patch and you need to defend til the very last kick … of the ball. In one painful injury-time period of play, the difference between a momentously good and a momentously bad Ibrox side was demonstrated to full effect:

I can’t remember who hit the long, hanging ball into their box - but what I’ll never forget is how tailor-made it was for Stephen Thompson. We can slag his lack of pace all we want but his ability in the air, surrounded by defenders, is undoubted - this is his area of expertise and the ball hung so long in the sky pace was not an issue. Stephen did everything right positionally and in terms of holding off the two defenders and the goalie. But he headed away from goal when it seemed there was only one place the ball could go - over a kepeer well off his line.

That is where the ball did eventually go, twenty seconds later - over our keeper, well off his line. De Boer got too tight or was turned and Sutton just lifted it over our German. You can play as well as you like for ninety one minutes but if there’s ninety two to be played you can be sure, at Darkhead, that’s when Celtic will score.

And there can be sixty Old Firm games in a season but if you play as badly as we did in the first two, there’s absolutely no way you can complain when celtic go on to win the rest.

Things change fast between the old Firm without ever changing too much. This time next year we could have beaten them six out of six - but not with this squad … and Alex McLeish has this summer to prove it’s only the squad which is the problem.

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Published:
05.10.04 / 6pm
Category:
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