Apres Maritimo, Le deluge! (Amica Wronki … 0 GERS … 5)

All last night and all day today - in fact ever since the draw was made for the innaugural group stages of the Uefa Cup - I couldn’t help but come over all pessimistic whenever I thought of The Gers in continental competition. Four middle-ranking to unknown names meant little by way of glamour in our Group F opposition but a whole lot of potential embarrassment. If they’d got even this “far” in the competition then our struggles with the minows of Madeira meant the Alkmaars and Wronkis of the world were well capable of defeating a Rangers team short on confidence, short on conviction, short of an established midfield.

But, at the same time, Gers@OpenFootball was continually reporting on increasingly solid and always victorious domestic performances. Since missing all those chances on that Portugese island and succumbing to a second-half goal on a sandpit, McLeish’s men have ground out win after win, after win. With every game came a slight loosening of the grip round our team’s collective throat. The pressure which asphixiated our creativity was alleviated in consistently increasing yet barely perceptable degrees. Only a look at the wider picture reveals the extent of the change - the transformation.

A narrow, desperate 1-0 win against Inverness became a slightly fortunate 2-0 win against Aberdeen. This mutated into a more convincing 2-0 win at Dundee but both goals came late and the second leg win over Maritimo couldn’t have been any closer but we did dominate the posession. The following 2-0 win over Killie saw one goal scored early and the second scored late. The same thing happened at Motherwell on Sunday but Motherwell are better than Killie this season and between our early and late goals there appeared a brief patch of Rangers play which could only be described as purple.

I felt on Sunday night that there’d been signs Rangers Football Club were once again ready to cut loose on teams. This new Rangers side was slowly finding a belief in their ability to actually destroy someone. Tonight, in Poland, some 300 KM west of Warsaw, it happened. Rangers ran riot.

Again, it was tentative to begin with. We had so much possession and looked so capable and when Peter Lovinpants slapped one in after 17 minutes you thought “we’ve got the early lead again - will we also have to sweat til the last ten minutes for the winner again?”. And as we then lost our way and our momentum slightly, as Amica seemed to be getting wise to our Arveladze-Lovenkrands-Prso-Burke front line, I began to suspect it would be another long night in Europe.

This run of narrow wins could end in one of two ways: Either a team was eventually going to equalise and we’d discover one-goal leads aren’t always enough or the Teds would use this consistently solid defensive record as a real launch pad and start building on it. The lull towards half-time, in a stadium bedecked in red white and blue for both teams, really did hang this quandry very evenly in the balance…of symmetrically equivelant equals.

But, despite the introduction of their David Beckham look-a-like, Amica became the first team to take a complete doing from The Rangers of 2004/2005. The introduction of OUR anwer to David Beckham (in terms of speaking Spanish and putting in super-human effort in a game, that is), Nacho Novo, came off the bench to prove, once again, that he and Prso need only a second together up- front to give Rangers a goal.

Against Killie, Prso came on to flick a ball into the path of wee Ignacio and it was 2-0 The Gers. Tonight, Nach’s first touch was a wobbly pass to Burke, deep in our own half - the ball made its way out to Vignal who sent a lovely curling ball up to the edge of the box, inside left position: Dado ran from the penalty spot, in the direction of the corner flag, just as he had when the ball deflected off him into Peter’s path for the first goal of the evening. Once more, the Croat was loitering with killer intent. His marker went with him, Dado let the ball follow it’s natural path toward goal, gave it a backward flick to the edge of the box, chortled at the bewildered Polish defender still heading for Berlin, and watched as Nacho Novo’s second touch of the night made it 2-0 The Gers.

They hit the bar from close range after that - should’ve scored. And they had a nice curled effort from their captain flash past Stef’s far post some time later. But from the moment of that 57th minute clincher by Nach, it was all Rangers attacks and half of them reaped goals.

Prso - looking more like Mark Hateley as a classic Rangers leader of the line with every game he plays (It’s a long-haired, ex-Monaco player thing I guess) - was aagin cenral to the third goal. he held it and dribbled it at the edge of the Amica box until it could be drilled home by Nando Ricksen from the same boundary of that 18-yard oblong. Nando was bag of energy in the middle tonight but noweher near as spectacular as Mr Bob Malcolm, the revelation of our season so far.

Big Bob was spreading the passes around like Souness in his pomp. Even the little knock-backs to his defence when surrounded by the all-white figures of the home side were masterfully intelligent. The absence of both Raes and Mlad The Impaler through injury have given Bob his chance and I haven’t seen enough from any of that trio to warrant the droping off the big fellah when they’re all fit again.

Arveladze and Lovenkrand’s inclusion at the expense of Novo had enraged me at the start of the evening but Pete’s opener proved the manager half correct and Shota’s courageous and visionary movement across and through the Wronki defence in the build up to that same 17th minute strike was probably enough to prove Eck totally correct. If thre was any remaining doubt over the ginger gaffer’s tactical choices, the 73rd minute put it to bed: Shota’s run into the box was halted illegally and he almost assaulted the keeper, who’d casually picked up the ball as the Spanish ref pointed to the white-wash blob, in an effort to ensure he’d have the thing before any of his Ibrox colleagues - Shota would be taking the spot kick. It went in off the bar and the TV cameras showed Stef taking the piss out his Georgian team-mate for the momentary heart-stop caused by that touch of wood - but, in the end, it was the perfect penalty. When you’re a striker, greed is good .

All the time I’m watching these pictures, with Jock Brown buzzing in my ear like a blast from STV and BBC’s past, I’m feeling a tremendous weight lifting off my shoulders. I’ve grown so used to us relying on our defence to seal games that a goal-frenzy at the other end had become the stuff of fairy-tales. Similairly, Rangers winning an important game in Eruropean competition, away from home, is traditionally an endurance test, a night for the nails to be bitten to the quick, the edge of the setee to be worn postage- stamp thick. Both expectations were being dashed in an ever-more wondrous pile-up of relaxation. (Sniff!) I felt water at the back of the eye-balls at one strange point - a wee damn of tension ready to burst! I’d come prepared for a night of stoicism but was being served bacchanalia. It was, as the Kinks would have it, all too beautiful.

Not since I danced about in front of my stereo over eight years ago, as we pumped Alania Vladikavkaz 7-2 in Russia, have I been so pleasantly and systematically removed from my customary state of Euro anxiety.

Dado Prso was the only striker - including the subs! - not to get on the score sheet so, in this night of statistical perfection, he was the man-of-the-match with a hand in the first three goals. Stephen Thompson’s netted against Russians and Moldova this season already so he wasn’t about to waste the chance of claiming a third Eastern European scalp for his “goals for” column. Chris Burke chased what should have been a lost cause to the by-line. He hooked it across the face of the goal and their kepeer punched it onto Thompson’s head. Our man butted it right back into the net. 5-0. FIVE-NIL!

Suddenly Amica Wronki are a bad team and they won’t win a single point in this group. Even if that’s true, with the top three qualifying there’s already one team we’ll definitely finish above and so we need only do better than one more side in the group to ensure we progress.

And we know it’s about much more than Amica being worse than anyone expected. Its about Rangers being the team to PROVE they were worse than anyone expected. Winning five-nil in this competition, away from home, is a seriously impressive achievement, especially when so many of these unglamarous sides have given us so much trouble in the past.

This was all about Rangers getting off to the best possible start imaginable in a round-robin which was worrying a lot of us. We’ve given ourselves a great sense of upward momentum - especially necessary as we have a match night off when the competition resumes in a fortnight and so Graz and Auxerre could both go above us in the table by winning their respective ties and adding three pointseach to the one they won from each other in tonight’s other Group F game.

I’m wonderfuly, blissfully relieved tonight, folks. Relieved. I was dancing in front of the Setanta pictures as the goals went in and I was giggling like a wean as we went from two to three to four and it became a good old-fashined ROUT, but the overwhelming feeling, now that the match is over, is quiet, solid, peaceful, contentment. I won’t be shouting from the rooftops. This wasn’t the Champions league. But this was a wonderful performance in its own terms, in what it means for the progress of this latest edition of Alex McLeish’s Rangers.

Oh aye! De - Fin - Eeeeh-tley! The Rangers, once again, are “good to watch”, “hard to beat”, “a form team”. Let’s see now if we can go the full hog and become, once more, simply “successful”.

Billy Dodds hat-trick on Sunday?