McLeish: From cakewalk to white-knuckler

Jings, folks - we even lost the scrap going down the tunnel at the end. Paolo Vanoli may be more able to cope with Mark de Vries (SIZE of that guy!!!) than I’ll ever be but he just couldn’t make a job of it, could he?

That kind of kerfufle is always gonnae be spolit up by polis and stewards. Even if you’re keiching yerself, ye don’t let the Gersey down by actually retreating.

The big Hearts striker - who we GIFTED chances ysterday and who Boumsong did NOT have in his back pocket as so many of the Fourth Estate seem to be insisting - was apologising today for the unseemly pushing match which followed the final whistle down old Gorgie way yesteday.

But, for me, he was doing what he was supposed to - getting steamed in when he saw his team mates were facing a scrap. It should have been our players who were saying sorry, for allowing one of their own to be pushed around. (I’m exempting Stephen Thomspson from that - he gets straight out onto the pitch again today and elbows a Jambos Under-21 player. Banned for Sunday’s game but - hey! - at least he’s hurting!)

But they’re depressed, our team. They are clearly unhappy chappies and you feel that the failure to win the ding-dong with Stamp, de Vries, Neilson etc was a sign of the black mood coursing through our ranks.

The effort on the ptch is there. The desire not to be out-muscled while the actual game is on and the determination to run until they drop is very much apparent. But that necessary joie de vivre, that enjoyment and belief in your ability to win, is as absent as a creative force in our midfield.

Phil Stamp and his cohorts were doing what they were supposed to by steaming into our ball players and refusing to let us settle. When they began kicking Burkey, Maurice Ross did the desired thing and tried to break the ankle of the Rangers-supporting Republic of Ireland defender who had tried to do the same to our wee ginger wizard as he tried to do to Neil McCann down the same flanks in recent years.

But amid all the physical stuff, all Craig Moore’s body-checking of guys he couldnae find the legs to dispossess legally, there was absolutely no cohesion or shape.

Lovenkrands’ wee cameo, his blonde highlights now outgrown with a sombre broon, summed us up: He knew where the ball was and how to get to it but he was scared of the thing and what it would do to him when, as duly transpired, he skied it over the bar … maybe even a stand.

I’m not ever gonnae be malicious about Alex McLeish. I’m not ever going to be maliious about any Rangers employee who is simply finding that their efforts aren’t good enough. He’s a good man and when that wee yappy tit from across the way started nit-picking on how much money Eck claimed celtic spent then we can see more clearly than ever how nice it is to have a guy with manners and self-respect at the helm.

But, at the end of the day, the one thing Alex seems to be lacking is the one thing he’ll think us most malicious for trying to find - An idea of how to return our team to winning ways.

He’s given us great days and nights, Big Eck - great victories over the hooped mob and one magnificent Treble. He could do no wrong when he first entered the Palace but now he’s barely able to get anything right.

His hands are definitely tied by the financial constrictions which were never his fault but he’s let things get so bad that patently talented players are beginning to look as if they’ve forgotten how to play the game.

They say Portugese league players used to feign injury when they had a game away to Maritimo coming up. The runway into the Madeira airport which services our next Uefa Cup opponents, was so short the pilots used to come close to crashing almost every time they landed teams there.

That runway may have been extended but what lies at the end of it could still prove fatal for Alex McLeish’s time at Rangers.

Fu*k! I hope it doesn’t. Come on Eck - get it right, mate. Get it right in this game and suddenly the season seems very, very young.

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Published:
09.13.04 / 11pm
Category:
News