Goals fit to change a season (Ayburdeeeeen … 0 GERS …2)

The goals were brilliant and the result - don’t get me wrong - is an absolute joy, but one or two contextual factors serve to skewer the regard in which some Gers fans will hold tonight’s League Cup victory at Pittodrie. Beating Aberdeen is always delicious but in Rangers’ current form, beating anyone is a blessed relief. The fact that, since the outset of 2004/2005, we’ve slipped so far below the 21st Century expectation levels surrounding a Rangers team and Aberdeen have defied the levels of pessimism screwed into Pittodrie over the last decade creates a danger of this win being seen as a significant turning point for Alex McLeish.

In reality, without wins over Dundee and Maritimo in his next two fixtures, this latest victory in the Granite City will become more palliative than cure. The Ginger Gaffer has eased his woes for a few days, diluted the tide of criticism coming his way rather than erecting a permanent damn against it. We won, but there was still plenty to frown about.

Aberdeen created half a dozen emmbarrasingly clear scoring chances, evenly spread between the first minute and the last. Had The Two Jimmies got themselves a striker of even the most modest ability, tonight could well have been the first episode of a new BBC reality TV programme, “Manager Swap”. Messrs Calderwood and Nichol would have put the seal on their opening day draw with The Gers and subsequent run to second place in the SPL - punting The Rangers out the CIS Cup would have been enough to have Aberdeen legend McLeish axed and very likely the Gers-daft Pittodrie coaching-staff installed at Ibrox as his replacement. One goal before the 87th minute is all it would have taken.

As it transpired, Boumsong, Moore, Zura and Vignal managed to keep themselves a clean sheet without ever looking too convincing as a unit. Stef was made to look good when he parried a ten-yard header from Severin over the bar but even if Deutschland Deutschland’s Number Ein had kept his hands by his side, the second-half effort would have smacked off his face and bounced away from goal. It was straight at him.

Stephen Craig, who ran at us worryingly a few times as a Motherwell player last season, did so again tonight with the same look of menace as he found space and time but with, thankfully, the same lack of finesse when presented with a clear shot on goal.

Aberdeen got ripped in and pushed up. This combative style actually suited a Rangers midfield comprised of battlers - that is, comprised of defenders. Zura’s installation at right back allowed Nando to push up and he was buddied-up in the trenches by sometime left-back Paolo Vanoli and erstwhile automaton Robert Francis Timothy Peter Malcolm. Bob was eventually dismissed in the second minute of injury time for a second, much more technical yellow-card offence. The ref had shat it all night to administer a second yellow to any player from either team. Probably about three on each side deserved to go off at some point or other - Malcolm was one who could’ve walked much earlier so that, and the fact we were already through to the quarter-finals when he grabbed some sheep-worrier round the neck, probably decided the official that Big Boab would be the man.

We lacked much of anything going forward. Wee Burkey, our only creative midfielder, was a wee bit lost out on the wing tonight, and while Stephen Thompson ploughed a valiant and honest furrow, he was getting little more change than his fifth-minute turn of the accomplished Russell Andersn well outside the box which resulted in a prosaic shot wide.

But this very website and this very fat bloke did declare after that very bad win over Inverness that a win at Pittodrie, considering Aberdeen’s very real promise under Claderwood and Nichol and the attendant exorcism factor (our poor away form began with the 0-0 at this ground on day one of the SPL season), would be as potentially pivotal as it was nevertheless do-able. And Alex McLeish, the man under fire, delivered. Who are we to question how he did it?

Well, We’re The Rangers support, the people who pay his wages, so we can question it all we like. The first half was as boring as anything I’ve seen in a long time … okay then - since Sunday. And the fact I forgot to mention Shota Arveladze when running through the starting eleven foghorns how RIDICULOUS it was to drop Nacho Novo.

Okay, okay - naw, yer right - fair’s fair: Novo has not scored a goal against a Scottish team all season. Even if it is a young season that’s still not good enough for a man brought here to bang them in and one suspects, judging by his body language when subbed after an hour on Sunday against Inverness, he may well have had a word or two for the boss which McLeish repayed him with the team sheet for this game. The fact that Nach came on with three minutes remaining and with virtually his first touch created FROM NOTHING the goal we hadn’t looked like creating for the previous 87 minutes, is MAYBE a result of McLeish’s “tough love”.

Nah: Nacho Novo came to Ibrox happy to take on the goalscoring burden, but he did so under the illusion he’d have a MIDFIELD behind him! Perhpas even - call him Mr Fussy - that he’d have a striking partner who was allowed to play UP-FRONT, BESIDE him! Nacho doesn’t always have the best touch, he doesn’t always have the precision pass of a Ronald De Boer or the finishing of Marco Negri but - jeeze - does he ever have twenty times the winning attitude these guys posessed and enough of their talent to marry it to?! How blind a manager do you have to be to fail to notice how the wee Spaniard’s all-round contribution TRANSFORMS our attack?! Novo goes back to get the ball when he realises their is no-one there to give him it and he occupies a defence more consistently than Stephen Hughes or Alex Rae can ever manage. Litte wonder that his industries in the deep-lying areas blunt his craft in front of goal. When he plays we can be contained up front, we can still be kept at bay. When he doesn’t play we’re non-existent as an attacking force.

Our first goal tonight was from slightly more than nothing but not much. It came from the midfield destroyer, the defensive hatchet man. Basically it was scored by the one guy you would most want to see hitting the net for Rangers at Pittodrie: Fernando Ricksen. We were wearing the all-white strip for this one (Damn! Maybe it’s not the home socks which are unlucky - maybe it’s the blue shirt!!!) and I think Fernando took that as his cue to do a Beckham. Had he been watching the footage of Beck’s free-kick winner against Pamplona last night? If so, he studied it to perfection.

Stephen Thompson is brought down in the Aberdeen D, Nando steps up and curls and dips a right-foot belter over the wall and into the far corner of Preece’s net - all at 110 miles per hour. Off he runs to the South Stand to give it a bit of That to the home fans and a touch of This to the Bears further down the line before he’s mobbed by genuinely delighted team-mates. Once again, we score away goals live on the BBC, not on Setanta. We play live on the BBC at HOME next Thursday, in the most important game of Alex McLeish’s reign - here’s hoping the Maritimo net bulges with redoubled regularity. But I’d rather have Prso back from injury and wee Nacho back from the bench than rely on channel-orientated superstition.

This was another horrible Rangers display but when you’re in a rut you often have to get ugly and I’ve never had much truck with flowery football for it’s own sake. If you’re gong to win grimly then it’s politic to make your goals as beautiful as possible. The goals we scored at the end of each half tonight wre indeed lovely enough to wipe out he memory of the forty-odd minutes of stodge which preceeded them. Fernando’s was reward for his sterling role in midfield (please don’t ever go back to defence, Rickers!) and Stephen Thompson’s clincher was likewise for his toils up front.

The big guy had little to feed off and that was as much down to Shota’s AWOL act as red-head Burke’s losing battle with the Red- shirted defence. When McLeish decided, forty minutes too late, to take Arveladze off, the resultant goal summed up exactly why the Georgian had to go off almost as much as it epitomised the qualities of the three Gers who engineered it.

A ball up the wing to Nacho and he’s holding it in the corner. But no time-waster he, no ventures towards the corner flag for this guy, despite the fact he’s facing the cloth on a stick and is far nearer the players’ tunnel than the goal mouth. Ex-nihilo, a goal. Out of nothing Nacho has turned and left three defenders wondering where he’s gone. His ball into the box is probably sclaffed but if Ignacio hadn’t got it onto the penalty spot then Chris Burke - ever vigilant for loose change and ever-ready with a glorious touch - wouldn’t have had anything to run onto. Burkey is going away from goal but his single glanced touch of the ball sends it behind himself and into the path of Stephen Thompson. Suddely the centre-forward’s retro mulet makes sense as he shows the red-neck stupidity not to be deterred by two defenders on top of him and the Voeller-esque genius to tweak the ball down a channel he’s created with his own body - he knows he’s falling but he knows he has time to throw out a leg and get the sweetest touch onto the ball. It’s away, across Preece and into the opposite side of the net. Gerd Muller couldn’t have done it any better.

These players were trying their guts out tonight and the manager is now winning. He was one game from the sack - now he’s two games from reinventing this season.

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Published:
09.23.04 / 9pm
Category:
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