Inspiration turns to perspiration ( Well … 2 GERS … 3)

There’s nothing scarier than geting a chance. You can want something so much that the moment you see it in front of you, waiting to be plucked, fear of blowing the chance takes over. The utterly stunning result from Parkhead yesterday gifted us the opportunity to regain the top spot in the SPL a whole lot quicker than we’d imagined. Some of us thought we’d never regain it - not this season anyway. Fears of Motherwell backlashes from Hampden remained but at least we wouldn’t be going four or five points adrift of top spot - lose or draw, we’d still have the chance to reach pole position by winning the last Old Firm game of the season.

Nevertheless, to fail to win today would have been seen as choking on the proverbial open net (Much as Peter Lovenkrands eventually did in the last minute at Fir Park). We knew Motherwell would kick and bite and worse. But an inability to overcome this would spell out Rangers’ lack of Championship credentials. Never mind the restructuring of our defence and midfield, never mind that Kyrgiakos and Prso in particular were knackered from trans-global World Cup exertions. Never mind that Buffel was out altogether because of his international duties. No-one would remember such piddling details if we failed to consume the contents of the plate Celtic had just handed us.

McLeish has dropped points at Fir Park in every season he’s been at charge at Rangers. We won 2-0 on our previous visit to Lanarkshire in this campaign. Just another reason for anxiety for pessimists like me.

But instead of blowing it, for 51 minutes we blew Motherwell away. As with the CIS final - as with Well’s visit to Ibrox, we were 1-0 up before anyone had a chance to digest their first mouthful of pie and we were 2-0 up before the Bovrils had cooled to lukewarm. Talk about easing any doubts! The expectation that Motherwell would come flying out the blocks was obviously shared by the Rangers dressing room. McLeish’s tactic in response wasn’t so much “let’s contain them, let’s cool their ardour” as “let’s show them what it means to be ‘fired up’, let’s show them that a Rangers’ team’s need for the Championship will always outweigh any also-ran’s need for revenge”! Motherwell were scarceley allowed to touch the ball for the first four minutes and when they did it was only a desperate clearence to the edge of the box which Gregory Vignal fired into the net with all the venomous aplomb of a Brazilian legend.

The intricate moves leading up to this moment were breath-taking intheir accuracy and pace. The home side were chasing shadows. WHAT A GOAL!

This was the kind of classic powerplay reminiscent of that 4-0 drubbing of Kilmarnock in the run-up to our 2003 title win. That too was a day when we felt we’d been given a boost by Celtic’s inadequacies. We’d been nervous while on top, we’d thrown away the chance to stay on top and when we were given a second chance we took it with both hands. Vignal’s shot past Marshall was a right-footer from a left-footed player. He caught it so sweetly it would have gone through the back of the Davie Cooper stand if it hadn’t met the rigging first.

Tube Features here had worried on Thursday night (See “Butcher’s butchers…” piece below) that Vignal’s refusal of Rangers’ latest terms would see him shirk his duties in an effort to stay fit for whoever he signs a deal with next season. God knows I’ve tried, but you really couldn’t be more wrong. What hadn’t occurred to me in my infantile wisdom, was that Gregory might use the remaining eight games of the season to show Rangers why they should give him all the pennies he wanted.

His season-turner against Maritimo was a penalty. His era-definer against Celtic was a left-footed effort bundled in by Rab Douglas. He followed up today’s right-footed belter with the only kind of goal he hadn’t managed so far - a wee heider. More lovely football, a beautiful ball into the box and Vignal glanced it past the out-rushing Marsahll. We went in 2-0 up at half-time and all I thought we needed was a third to be sure, to be sure.

Ricksen and Rae having to cover right back in the absence of Mo Ross did not stop Nando keeping up his Player of the Year level of contribution. There’s 51 minutes on the clock and he floats in a fantastic free-kick from the left flank. Bob Malcolm got a nod, Prso - Nando’s main rival for that Player of the Year tag - got a flick, Marshall got nothing and us Gers punters got that 3-0 lead we thought would seal it.

It did. We won the game. Having expressed so many doubts about this game in the days leading up to it there’s no doubt that the main thing was to win it in any way we could. Getting all three points was an achievement - those three points getting us to the top of the league was a beautiful bonus. But having felt the relief of going to the top of the league so early in the match, all that followed our third goal was dissapointment and worry.

Yeah, I made noises about the need to stay sharp and focussed - I threw a few verbal reminders the way of my heroes but I was going through the motions. As far as I was concerned the game was won. All I was worried about was the possibility of injuries because, as we all know, Motherwell are one petulant little bunch of psychos - when they know they’re beaten they start trying to take bodies. And why not. You can never rely on a ref to deal with it but I wasn’t ready for our players losing their cool as badly as they did.

Twenty minutes remained when Big Boab handled in the box. He came forward to meet the loose bouncer and it span up off the turf to his right. He put his arms before his body and there was no doubt about the award. McBride smacked the spot-kick home ala Johann Neeskens in the 1974 World Cup final - straight down the middle. You’d think Waterreus, a Dutchman, would know how to stop that kind of pen! (Only yoking Ronald - you were great).

Surely it would have been better then to let Kyrgiakos remain on the field for the next five minutes, to coach Bob back to full confidence. But no, McLeish said he was coming off - as had obviously been agreed before we lost that goal. Was the Big Greek injured? I don’t know - no doubt he was knackered after his full 90 for his country mid-week and the travelling involved, but just another five minutes would have done. As it was we were taking away our best defender, shoving on the un-match-fit Zurab, to partner a holding midfielder who’d just given away a penalty at centre-half. I was worried.

And Motherwell continued to leave the boot in. And we continued to fail to deal with it.

Barry Ferguson was probably the last man on the pitch who I thought would rise to the bait. However, his reaction to the straight-forward assault on him by Richie Foran, following within seconds upon an equally late boot at Alex Rae by Clarkson and Foran’s preliminary push and bitch at Ferguson, was almost angelic compared to what most mortals would have done in Bazza’s situation. Ferguson picked up his first yellow for a badly-timed late challenge out on the opposite wing - it was a stupiud move by Bazz. His decision to hook his arm round Foran’s neck after the little shit had put two feet into him was wrong on two more counts.

(a) it was clearly raising his hands to an opponent, which is a sending off, and …

(b) knowing it was a sending off, Bazza should have abstained altogether or at least connected a proper punch with the prick’s jaw.

Of course, this is petulant pish on my part and had Barry done as most other people would and levelled Foran he would certainly be in bigger trouble than he is right now. He would have no case. The fact he didn’t actually hook the Well assailant in the face of such career-threatening treatment must stand him in good stead for any appeal against any lengthy ban to be imposed. Basically, we want Fergie playing against the smell on April 23rd/24th. Dougie MacDonald didn’t give him a straight red, almost as if he knew the yellow would suffice to get rid of Ferguson. We have to hope then that this is an admisson on the part of the referee that Ferguson’s conduct was not violent enough to warrant more than the automatic one-game ban.

Mind you, MacDonald’s inability to red-card Foran for his part in the fracas (Was it Foran actually? - they all look the same to me, these bealin’-faced weans), his inability to award Well another penalty when Bob Malcolm grappled the legs of an opponent in the box, his inability to administer a second yellow to Scot MacDonald for his hands-raised pushing of Nacho Novo into the enclosure, his decision to give Sotirios a yellow card instead of a red for putting his studs into an opponent’s stomach in the first half, and his ability to find four minutes of injury time then turn it into five and a half minutes of injury time, might dissuade any appeals panel from following this referee’s tacit lead.

So Motherwell scored another with six minutes left. Again Big Bob got an arm to it. This time, instead of conceding a penalty, the ball was allowed to deflect off Malcolm’s limb, away from Waterreus’s reach and into the back of the net. Motherwell had tried to create a battle and they’d succeeded - all the patient football was removed from the game and it became an end-to-end Russian roulette affair. Our defending was more non-existant than the absence of one man could explain.

Arveladze and Lovenkrands came on. Peter was tripped up off the ball just before the Ferguson sending-off and then he could only turn the ball over the bar when it was put in front of him, two yards out, keeper nowehere. Both he and the ball were travelling though - just as our two Georgian subs had been all last week. Zurab was no paliative to Malcolm’s disintegration - every Well ball into our box caused panic. Arveladze held off his marker to knock the ball into the net but Dougie MacDonald decided it was a foul by the Georgian. Fair enough. We shouldn’t have been in this position in the first place, having been 3-0 up.

But, now I’ve calmed down, and the more I remember my Thursday and Friday fears about this game, the more I think about Alex Rae and Hamed Namouchi being drafted in for their first starts in weeks, teh more I remember Prso and Vignal celebrating this win with more conviction thna half The Gers support (Big Dado cuased a mini riot with his shirt-into-the-crowd exuberance) and the more I remember Hearts beating Celtic in 2003, in the same weekend we had a thrilling 4-3 win over Motherwell, the more I’m happy that we’re top of the league and the more I’m sure these players do have it in them. Good God, I was worrying all week about our jet-lagged legs - so what better to do than score as many goals as possible before the tiredness kicks in!! That’s exactly what we did and that’s why Motherwell’s two goals didn’t mean anything.

Last time we played Motherwell, Alex McLeish, in a shorter time as Rangers manager, equalled the number of trophies O’Neill has won at Parkhead. This time we met Motherwell knowing McLeish has now lost fewer home league games than O’Neill, in the SAME period of time. One SPL title more for Eck - this season’s - will blow all lingering doubts about his ability out of the window and will kill off the notion that O’Neill ever lorded it over us for any more than a season or for any longer than we lorded it over him.

Celtic, our main opponents for the title and for supremacy in Scotland, were booing their own yesterday - The Gers fans today sung like their lives depended on it. The better Motherwell played the more the Bears and Bearettes encouraged their heroes. You know something, I think Big Marv is right about the faith healing - sometimes you just have to want it enough.

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Published:
04.03.05 / 7pm
Category:
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