Parting Shota is a smack in the teeth (GERS … 4 Motherwell … 1)

Last home game of last season we had the evening set up as the “De Boer Twins Big Goodbye” event. I felt mildly insulted by it, given that Ronald had been less than committed for the last year of his contract and Frank had been at the club for a nano-second compared to some of the genuine Rangers greats who got no send-off of any kind. It wouldn’t have been so bad if there had been some spontonaety involved. The Rangers marketing machine had strangely combined with the De Boer bros’ private projected storyline of their lives to almost corner The Bears into giving the pair the send-off the Dutch duo thought they deserved.

We lost 1-0 to Hearts and that still didn’t embarrass Ron and Frank enough to cancel their little moment in the spotlight at full-time. I always like to say goodbye to anyone who’s leaving The Gers - I like a chance to show my appreciation one last time. But the appreciation had dried up a little for Ronnie The Farmer by the time he made his valedictory bow at The Brox. A season in which we were whitewashed by our nearest and loathedest could NOT be put to the back of our minds when we contrived to lose even our last meaningless home game to the Jambos. Frank should have just got out as he’d come in - suddenly. Ultimately, it all mattered little - it was all just petty fan-player politics. The season was long over. Fuck it - I clapped them: I’m not as mean as I want to be.

But today was different.

I do like Shota. He’s a likeable guy. I used to REALLY like him. But this season, Georgian Prince Arveladze has been doing the Ronnie de Boer bit. He has been injured and he has scored a vital goal - the extra-time winner against Celtic in the CIS Cup which ended that whitewash run - but, reading between some very well-spaced lines, Shota’s been saving himself for his next move.

Don’t get me wrong - I’m seriously glad McLeish put him in today instead of Lovenkrands and the situation which occured in the last half hour of this match may be more the manager’s fault than anyone else’s. However, the fact Shota banged in two goals and set up another in his Ibrox swansong has me more raging than rejoicing tonight.

Every fu**ing report I’ve read, heard or watched on today’s game (and with only the play-offs going on Dahn Sahff there’s been a sudden explosion in UK-wide interest in the SPL this weekend) has described it as a major triumph for Rangers. Yes, it may be a major triumph for the media, who now have the Championship, relegation AND final European spot all still to be resolved as we head into the final round of games, but no-one seems preapred to admit that Rangers 2004/2005 might very well have, once again, spectacularly CHUCKED IT this afternoon in Govan.

If Arveladze can score two so easily - if we can cut through that thoroughly forlorn and buttery Motherwell defence so knife-like for the first hour of the match -then why the hell couldn’t we keep doing it for the remaining third? Yes, okay - we finally started banging in the goals again. Last week I commented on the fact we hadn’t managed anything more than a single-goal win at Ibrox since the beginning of FEBRUARY: That one was put to bed today, at the last chance this season offered. But when we beat Hibs 3-0 at home three months back we also secured our final home clean sheet of this campaign. And yet our concession of daft late goals wouldn’t be such an issue if we’d just manage to SCORE MORE AT THE OTHER END!

4-1 is a smashing result normally. But things ain’t normal right now. We’ve managed to avoid letting Celtic win the league at Tynecastle tommorow and the league was lost effectively long before today. But while it is still technically there to play for and while we are waiting for Celtic to make just ONE slip in two games as opposed to the twelve slips in six games we would have needed to claw back the difference at the end of last season, then we need to be clincial. We need to be professional.

Don’t believe me? Think I’m being too harsh? Fine:

This time, two years ago: Celtic’s second last game of the SPL season is at home and they win 6-2. An even better result than we achieved today. But they were beating Dundee 6-1 when Lee Mair scored in the final minute for the visitors. That game was live on BBC1 and I watched the closing stages. I leapt out my seat when Mair scored - capitalising on a bit of a fuck-up in Celtic’s defence - and, with the title race even closer then than now, the look on Martin O’Neill’s face as his players came off the pitch was borne of the same knowledge: He knew that goal could make a huge difference:

Most reports now wrongly claim Celtic lost the 2003 league by one goal. In fact, if the goal difference had finished level Rangers would still have triumphed by dint of a better Goals For column. However, knowing they only needed one more goal at Rugby Park instead of two could have given Celtic the last joule of energy they needed to win the SPL title on the last day of 2002/2003.

O’Neill and his players had the sense to be shattered by that Dundee goal two years ago. They trudged off the pitch as if they’d just lost, for example, the UEFA Cup final after extra-time, rather than having just won by four clear goals in their final home game of the season.

So when we currently need Celtic to drop points as well as score fewer goals and we shoot ourselves in the foot with an 89th minute Own Goal of even more pathetic engineering than Marv’s effort of last week, we should be even more devestated. But our players did a lap of honour at full-time today and Shota went down the tunnel last with a Novo draped in a Spain flag, a la Raul - celebrating as if we’d won the league a few weeks ago.

But this grossly incongrous - if not down-right inappropriate - care-free farewell was in keeping with the epidemic lack of professionalism, concenration and application which came about with our fourth goal. Let me just repeat - this fourth goal was scored in the 57th minute. FIFTY SEVEN MINUTES! We maybe can’t ask every player to give his all for the full ninety but we certainly want more than an hour out of them, particlularly when the league can still be won.

Oh yes, it can.

I don’t belive we will. I haven’t belived for a while that we will win it. What makes things even worse for Yours Bluely is that, our inability to beat Dundee United aside, as soon as it became clear Rangers would be way closer to Celtic this season than we were last, I became convinced it would only end one way: We’d lose the league on the final day. Why? Because, call me a sick bastard (like everyone else does), but I’m just convinced O’Neill has to have his “revenge” for what he and his cohorts have decided was an injustice (ie Celtic didn’t win something) on the final day of the 2002/2003 season.

Sutton tld us at Rugby Park that day how his dressing room “thought” and O’Neill is the kind of person who will make some sort of smart-arsed unclassy remark pertaining back to that day when he gets the chance: It needs to be an apposite moment for him to feel he can say owt but how much more apposite than Fir Park next Sunday! And it just wouldn’t be painful enough for his liking if celtic won by two clear points next week - it’ll have to be on goal-difference if we’re to feel JUST EXACTLY as gutted as his mob did at Rugby Park a couple of seasons back.

When it became clear The Teds were gonnae win today (after 17 minutes of the first half - not so much for our two goals but Motherwell’s obvious inability to cope with their own problems) the only way this season’s top two can go into the final week level on points is if Celtic draw tommorow. Aberdeen duly beat Hibs at Easter Road today - a result which had me punching fuck out the dash board when I heard it - and so the very handy but inconsistent Hibees have had their necessary downs after their up of winning at Parkhead. This means that if we win next Sunday it’ll be by one goal, meaning Celtic would have to beat Motherwell by six goals. That’s doable for The Smell.

Or, the other obvious scenario which allows the league to be decided on goal-difference is if Celtic win tommorow at Tynecastle but draw at Fir park as we beat Hibs - again the narrow Rangers win at Easter Road could be overtaken by a 6-0 away win on Gorgie tommorow. The Hearts players must be as ready to crack as they are to rock: That’s doable for The Smell.

Yup, it’s all a moot point if Celic, as expected, win both their remaining games. But if the only way we can win the SPL is by a Celtic slip-up then we have to ensure we cover as many angles as we can in preparation for that eventuality. Had we battered in another two or three today - to take our goal difference to seven or eight better than celtic’s then there’s no way, should they draw one game, they could catch our goal-difference in their other remaining fixture. We’d have it in our own hands.

And so it really ripped the piss out me and my renewed season ticket when Arveladze was doing his “What a character” act - even if he had already secured us the points. The punters were belting out his name. Initially, so was I. But his behaviour was the kind of stuff which should liven up a dull testimonial game or the last home game of a season where every honour has already been decided.

But maybe, REALLY, it’s because I’ve been so resigned to losing the SPL championship race - so sure I knew every set-back was coming before it came that I haven’t really allowed the anger and dissapointment to kick in at any stage. Maybe today was simply the day in which my philospohical front was over-taken by my gutted gut reaction. If Celtic draw tommorow, Rangers will just shit it next Sunday anyway.

Tom “Tiny” Wharton. This ref’s career was a small bit before my time. A huge man, instantly recognisable, he refereed the 1962 European Cup-Winners’ Cup final between Fiorentina and Athletico Madrid at Hampden and countless Old Firm games of invariable controversy. However I did see him in action at one Rangers game, the night we played a friendly at Dumbarton for the official opening of the Sons’ new stadium a few seasons back. I had a piece in the match programme for that game (proud as punch - closest I ever came to getting on the team-sheet) but my main memory, apart from buying 835 match programmes, was Mr Wharton making a speech before declaring the new one-stand stadium officially open. This, of course was as part of his latter footbaling remit. Ibrox stood in perfect silence for one of Scotland’s finest ever refs today - and then got on with the business of slagging the living daylights out of the one we had officiating this afternoon! The sun also rises …

Loved the abundance of Lion Rampants and Saltires today - paticularly so in the Blue Order neck of the woods. Great to see The Gers punters finally realinsg that, if we have to be any nationality, let’s make us proud to be Scottish. that’s the way it’s almost always been.

God, The Goalie was on the pitch at half-time doing the tombola. If only he’d been in-between the sticks at a minute shy of full-time. Andrew Leiws Goram would never have allowed what happened to happen on his watch. Roland and Marvin combined for a second succesive week of comic Own Goal cuts at The Broomloan end.

For the previous five minutes, “please remain in your current position” was the running LCD message on the scoreboards. The majority of the Gers support were going to get a chance to say goodbye to the players but we shouldn’t rush the pitch or owt. But the wording - “remain in your current position” seemed a foreknowledge of what Marvin was about to do.

And it worked. Rather than everyone slumping to their knees and crying their eyes out, we kept up the positions the first hour of play had deserved: Applause, cheers, songs of celebration. (too bad I was doing my first hand-stand in twenty five years JUST as that message came up … my arms are killing me!)

Buffel had run past his man brilliantly in the 12th minute and decided to stay on his feet when he could have gone down in the box. He slotted home with the conviction of a man finding his form - too late. Shota got his first parting goal after a great interchange with the great Prso. We ripped Motherwell apart and the only worry was their usual psychotic petulance under Big Tery would cripple all our players before next Sunday: If we tried to kick them back, we would then have players lost for next week through suspension.

A quick third and fourth goal in the second half killed off even the dark version of Motherwell’s youthful ardour. In the 54th minute Novo screamed down the wing and across into the box to tee up Shota again. The Georgian slid in to smack it home and then put a ball onto Prso three minutes later which Dado fed to Buffel for number four.

And then we lost the League again.

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Published:
06.26.05 / 6pm
Category:
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