A Shota Christmas curer (Killie … 0 GERS … 1)

And when yer feeling tender of both body and ego, you want as few people as possible to witness your return to the outside world. The Kilmarnock support made it a lot easier for Rangers in this respect: The away endS were full in Ayrshire’s finest stadium but the home sideS were pitifully under-occupied. They almost always are but the proximity of the Crimbo spend-fest and the pishness of Killie’s recent form ensured an empty swathe or two of lighter blue bucket seats.

Not that The Peepelle were making much noise either. The atmosphere amongst the away punters was very much one of “I’m here, aren’t I!!”. We’d been let down badly on Wednesday - but not unexpectedly - so many felt they were owed something by The Rangers players today. There’d be no singing or cheering til the Teds did something to deserve it. The players would be encouraging the fans today. They had a night off on Wednesday so we were reneging on our part of the deal this Sunday. I was just gutted at the loss. Not stunned by it. I’ve been gutted by Rangers in Europe for decades now and anything which happens inbetween is just a glorified distraction: Just gutted at the fact I can’t do anything to push Rangers on in Europe or to push us right out of Scotland and into the comparative excitement of the Rymans or Isthmian league. I keep going and I keep hoping but every season it’s just more pain in Europe and it’s got to the stage where I would be more shocked if Rangers actually DID become the first Scottish Club to qualify from some sort of Uefa group.

However, my acceptance of our inability to set the continent alight doesn’t have a proportional reaction when it comes to domestic fare. I wasn’t sitting there today, rubbing my hands with glee, thinking “Okay - I accept Europe’s a dead duck so I can retain my excitement for the prospect of winning the PL!”. Nah. Just because you know you aren’t gonnae get something, doesn’t make it any easier to accept its loss. Neither does it make it any easier to work yourself into a frenzy about a watered-down replacement. You’ re a heavy drinker, you love your bevvy but the doctor’s told you another drink will kill you - do you think Coca Cola suddenly becomes anything other than a tortuous reminder of the Becks, Stella, Guniess, Orvieto, Tequila and Grouse you CAN’T have??!! Naw - but when ye have that thirst a Coca Cola is the only thing which can take some of the bite off. We had to win today to stop the desolation deepening, NOT to compensate for Wednesday night.

And that’s basically, all we got. The Gers perhaps knew that a 4-0 win would be wasted on The Bears and Bearettes today. So they duly did the minimum. They did the “1-0 away win with an early goal” thang.

In truth, we saw a team in recovery today. The first quarter of an hour was utterly abysmal - perhaps a reaction to the lack of atmos but more likely a reaction to the horror of Auxerre. Rangers played through it like a man eating his weetabix after a night on the sauce. It’s not working but you have to push on. An opening fifteen minutes produced many cameos of inadequacy, from both sides. Big Marv, in acres of space, did that thing he did quite frequently at the begining of the season: He rolled the ball straight to an opponent, in the Rangers half, when there was no opposition player within a mile of him. That opposition player he’d found so brilliantly then played the 2nd worst pass of the game and failed to make anything other than an arse of a golden opportunity.

By the end of the match, we’d taken off Prso - our best man by a mile - and spent the last ten minutes soaking up the closest thing Kilmarnock could get to “pressure”. Before that it had been Colin Nish tapping everyone’s ankles ten seconds after the ball had gone, eliciting some seriously cringe-worthy embellishment from Klos and Vignal.

But, in the 16th minute, out of nothing, we surged forward - worried the Killie defence - saw the ball cleared out to the wing where the overlapping Alan Hutton swung it back into the heart of the Killie box. Shota did a pretty convincing impersonation of Andrei Shevchenko by controlling the ball on his chest and taking it away from three defenders in the same movement. Having displayed such cool and poise under immense pressure, he then tucked away the shot as everyone else admired his breast-work.

From this point, til the 80th minute, we bossed without ever convincing and Kilmarnock hassled without ever worrying. Ricksen couldn’t even get a real scrap going with young Naysmith who had wee bites at our Dutchman which were much more obvious than Nando’s dives and kicks. Alex Rae put the boot in a few times - both he and Nando were booed by the sectarian, racist, bigoted Killie Killie Boys.

Khisanishvili did not play. And this time he hadn’t been picked for the team either. Nah - cruel. The manager has to take some of the blame for Wednesady’s desecation of Zura’s rep. He was out of position in an unecessary role against Auxerre and his confidence may have been damaged iretrievably.

Mladenovic was quietly threatening in his ongoing Ray Wilkins impersonation. The Serb was unspectacular but always available for the short balls which helped us eventually take a foothold in that midfield area which has passed us by in our last two European ties. Good to see Hutton on from the start. Great to see Burkey and Big Stevie Thompson get the last ten minutes. TERRIBLE to see Nacho missing - it’s his own fault but, MAN, we need his energy.

Yes, of course, Boumsong is supposed to be the big news of the moment but, well, anyone who has read this site over the last year will know that some of us were never too hopeful of him being a Ranger beyond a photo-shoot in Provence anyway. Any extra time we get with the guy is great but we’ll probably see him once more in a Blue shirt. For me, Rangers have actually pulled off a coup to have a guy like that with us for even half a season - it may just have been just long enough to unify the new McLeish team and give us a solid foundation to build on.

Boum was crap on Wednesday when we needed him most spectacularly, okay, but so were Gazza and Laudrup in Europe. Our Uefa failures can’t ever be blamed on one player. The Frenchman was great today and has been for almost every other domestic game this season, including our pivotal double-header over the Smellies. All this pish about him being barracked by The Gers fans - which Rangers player hasn’t been … which player of ANY club hasn’t been (John Charles at Juventus and Niels Lieldholm at Milan are the only two examples I’ve heard of)?! It’s just the start of the PR leverage process, the attempts to get some sort of smoke screen around his inevitable departure which disguises the calculated, mercenary but ENTIRELY UNDERSTANDABLE nature of his move to the Premiership via the SPL. He’s been brilliant to watch and, unlike The Gers in Europe, he’s one treasure I wont regret losing because I never really expected him to be here anyway.

We’re one point off the top of the SPL at Christmas. Compare that to last year and be happy I suppose. We were title challengers for a month last season. We’ll be title challengers for at least half the season this time round. At this rate of progress we should definitely win the SPL in 2006.