Gers@OpenFitbaw’s Player of THAT season:

A dour, fortunate 1-0 win over Inverness Caley Thistle at a rain-swept Ibrox on Sunday 19th September 2004 offered little real encouragement for the 47,000 Bluenoses in attendance. Our new-look team spent much of that game hemmed into their own half by the journeyman pros of a club paying its first ever visit to Ibrox. The previous Thursday evening we’d played abysmally against European nobodies on a Portugese island. Already out of the Champions League at the qualifying stages, already trailing Celtic in the league after an awful run of form and an extension of the Parkhead side’s winning run in derbies, this was not the way to get The Bears back on Alex McLeish’ side.

But it maybe got just enough of us off his back for just long enough.

Merely three days after the Inverness match, he took his side to Pittodrie for a tricky CIS Cup tie. Live on TV across the country, a struggling Rangers were up against a resurgent Aberdeen. Jimmy Calderwood and Jimmy Nichol, two Bluenoses of the orangest order, were already being earmarked by some (aherm!) as Eck’s replacements, such was the good start they’d made since moving to Grampian from Dunfermline.

The game wasn’t pretty but the two goals which decided it were. Both were scored by men in the sashed, all-white away strip of The Rangers. It was another ship-steadier.

Then Novo came off the bench at Dens Park the following Sunday and scored twice to end the stalemate. After an eight-game drought this was the start of the Spaniard’s season and a sure-fire sign that another of McLeish’s pre-season signings would, in fact, come good.

Yet all this would have counted for nought if Frenchman Gregory Vignal, on loan from Liverpool, hadn’t tucked away that winning penalty in the shoot-out against Maritimo the folowing Thursday. We’d dominated the second leg of the UEFA Cup tie and Dado Prso - the scorer of that rot-stopper against Inverness - again proved his worth to his new boss by notching his first European goal for Rangers that night and levelling the aggregate score.

Had we failed to progress to the new Group Stage of the UEFA Cup then McLeish, undoubtedly, would have gone. But the Ginger Gaffer had rode out this knife-edge series of matches in his career. He’d retained his dignity throughout and the team’s performances contained the resoluteness he must have embodied in the dressing room for those four games. Now, with the confidence back and the pressure alleviated, the flair could return.

Kilmarnock, Motherwell and Amica Wronki were defeated in successive matches - 9 goals for, zero against. Dundee United’s last-minute equaliser at Ibrox showed the flaws were still there but another three straight wins in the SPL, including 5-0 over Aberdeen and 4-1 at Livingston, persuaded many The Gers were at last a force to be reckoned with again.

A win over Celtic, however, is always the true test of our ability to be Scotland’s best. When John Hartson gave Celtic a second half lead at Ibrox in the CIS Cup quarter-final it may have looked as though the derby defeats would extend to eight on the bounce. But that November night there was a determination and coolness about Rangers which hadn’t been evident in an Old Firm game for over a year and half. Dado equalised late on and Shota tied it up in extra time.

Another monkey off the back.

Ten days on, Celtic were back at The Brox and played us off the pitch for the first half hour. This was the SPL - this was no Cup tournament - and they meant business. But Prso and Novo were on fire now and Big Boumsong was a one-man rock at the back. The Gers went in at the break two goals and one man up . Thompson was off, Sutton followed early in the second half and Neil Lennon did everything he could to have the game abandoned. Martin O’Neill’s pathetic behaviour after the final whistle was the greatest filip we’d received all season: Celtic were cracking up.

The next time we played a derby, Boumsong was gone and Stefan Klos was less than three weeks away from a season-ending injury. It was the Scottish Cup - we brought on a new guy called Buffel and he looked good in flashes but failed to convert an easy chance to equalise late-on. We hadn’t won at Parkhead in almost 5 years and this defeat was marked by the absence of Boumsong - Khizanishvili and Andrews were culpable at the heart of our defence.

Zurab had also been at fault, as had Boumsong, in the latter’s second-last game before his January transfer to Newcastle. The 2-0 defeat at home to Auxerre put us out of the UEFA Cup Group we seemed to have all but won when we defeated AK Grazer 3-0 at home. Three teams from five progressed from our section and we were top after two of the four games we’d play - we’d scored eight and conceded none in so doing. Losing our third game, to eventual semi-finalists AZ Alkmaar, was no disgrace but the surrender to the French outfit was one of the lowest in a plethora of bad Euro nights at The Brox down the years.

Once again we were out of Europe before Christmas … ten days before Christmas.

So when Boumsong and Europe are gone , what do you do? A returning Chairman, David “The Mint” Murray, gave us a returning midfield maestro, Barry Ferguson. In the January sales we also got a new, improved Amoruso - one without the mistakes or the free-kick obsession - called Sotirios Kyrgiakos. The disastrous loss of Klos, the best keeper in Britain, was startlingly diluted by the addition of some mulleted Dutchman called Ronald Waterreus. How could someone so confident and so able be so unknown??!!

And we don’t really know who it was - he thinks it was God - but someone gave us a new Marvin Andrews … one who’d finally become Rangers Class.

In Bazza’s first game back the cheerers outweighed the booers at Hampden. Our former captain came on as a sub in the CIS Cup semi and helped us to a 7-1 routing of Dundee United - the team we just couldn’t beat in the league and the team Stefan Klos thought he’d equalised against at Tannadice. He hadn’t but he’d teed it up for Namouchi. Our German goalie, like ourselves, had know idea how much of a hero that header made him. We all thought it was two points lost, in the sleet and hail of Tayside on Ne’erday 2005 - but the point gained would be more than enough in the end.

All told, so far It had been a season of disaster-avoidance and tiny confidence boosters dotted along the way. But the really seismic moment of the campaign would always take place at one ground and one ground only: It could only happen at parkhead. This was the single venue where Rangers, without an away derby win since 2000, could divest themselves of the last remnants of domestic inferiority.

The derby of Sunday 20th February 2005 started like yet another in a series of failures against Martin O’Neill in the East End over the last four and a half years. We did nothing in the first half except keep Celtic at bay. Waterreus was our man of the match at that point - he duelled with and outshone parkhead’s second attempt at replacing Larsson. Craig Bellamy would end up as useless to O’Neill as Juninho had been.

Alex McLeish maintains that his half-time advice was merely “start passing the ball better”. And we did. But I find it difficult to believe there was not more to it. The delivery of that advice must have been as forceful and uplifting as the manner in which his players acted upon it. It was a steady, slow sea-change but it was as one-directional and devestating as any white-horse crashing on a harbour wall.

The defensive steadiness became midfield equality, begat attacking dominance. We went forward in millimetres, then inches, then yards - then we were camped outside the Celtic box and you were thinking “this looks special … this FEELs special … please let it BE special”. A 0-0 would just have been swallowed up as another Rangers failure at parkhead - all the god play would be forgotten if we didn’t do something concrete to convince ourselves and our immediate opponets that this wasn’t just an “encouraging” Rangers display. We had to make it the Real Deal:

Gregory Vignal hits it from outside the box, Rab Douglas spoons the ball and we have what, for me, is the most delirium-inducing RANGERS goal of the season. There were another couple of goals in 2004/2005 which had me even more delighted but they were scored by a Motherwell player …

Vignal’s run to the cameras and the bench were bathed in orgasmic joy. This wasn’t the kind of happiness which let you “smile” - this was so good it hurt. There was a veritable explosion in the corner of the Lisbon Lions stand and Nacho’s teasingly elongated clincher set the seal on the most joyous Parkhead celebrations for Gers fans since 1999 and probably the most maniacal since 1989.

We then set about doing what we could to ensure we didn’t take the inevitable next step - winning the League. Whenever we got top or close enough to see the peak, we would do all we could to chuck it. Inverness Caley’s last-minute equaliser at Ibrox, just two weeks after the famous Parkhead win, was the biggest boot in the baws felt by Yours Bluely in a long time. I mean, we’re talking right “up” there with Ally Mitchell’s late winner for Killie in the “Ten In A Row” season. It was that bad.

Even the easy winning of the CIS League Cup with a 5-1 demolition of Motherwell couldn’t push us into true SPL Championship self belief. All the parts were there - our players knew they could beat anyone in Scotland anywhere in Scotland. But again Dundee United - still bottom of the league and with a new manager - took points from us. This time it was all three, on Tuesday 12th April. Tony Bullock had a wonder-night in their goal but Shota Arveladze’s header over their bar, from UNDER their bar, summed up a seeming determination among The Rangers players to stay second in the table.

Celtic won the last old firm match of the season on the same pitch 12 days later and we were five points behind with five games to play. Forget it.

But then, on Saturday 30th April, Hibernian went to Celtic Park and destroyed the home side with a display of bright counter-attacking football which put a dent in the home side’s confidence alomst before their Ibrox win could bed in. The next day we played Aberdeen off the rain-soaked Pittodrie pitch with a display of sheer fucking belief.

“Keep believing”. It wasn’t a phrase I liked. It was, for me, a bit mawkish, a bit pukey - in short, a bit “Celtic” - a bit “faithful through and through”. But then Marvin Andrews made it a Rangers phrase. “Keep Believing” is more PC than “No Surrender”: Amounted to the same thing though.

We kept winning - right up to and including the last day of the season. But we still needed Celtic to slip up … and the previous four articles on this website will explain to you exactly how they did just that and how Rangers became … Champions.

RANGERS@OPENFOOTIBALL.CO.UK AWARDS FOR 2004/2005:

MAN OF THE SEASON:

ALEX MCLEISH. Everyone doubted him - I decided it was time he should go. Martin O’Neill’s constant bitching about conspiracies and the like must have riled him as much as the calls for his head hurt him. But never once, in defeat or victory, did he behave like anything other than the very image of Bill Struth or Walter Smith - A Rangers manger in every aspect. Dignity personified.

MATCH OF THE SEASON:

3rd Place: That 3-1 win at Pittodrie on 1st May showed The Rangers players were believing they could pull it off, even when some of their fans weren’t so sure. It was brilliant to watch - coruscating, devestating, panoramic yet clinically focussed football: The celebrations as passion-filled as the performance.

2nd Place: The 2-0 Derby win at Ibrox on 20th November. Celtic threw everything at us both in terms of their opening play and later incitement to riot but we ended up coasting to our first League derby win in nearly two years. The celtic players knew our side was fitter and more detrmined after the recent CIS quarter-final and resortedto their usual subject-changing tactics when things go wrong: It wasthe first realk sign they’d lost it.

FIRST PLACE: That 2-0 win at Parkhead in February. Barry was back and quietly reorganising our assault on the title. He started by reminding us how to piss all over Celtic. Ricksen was immense. The result was pivotal.

DOWNER OF THE SEASON:

Joint equal: The home defeat to Auxerre and the Brian Prunty equaliser for Inverness Caley Thistle. Both results were deserved but that doesn’t alter the fact they hurt so much - one for it’s sheer fu**ing inevitability, the other for it’s complete avoidability.

HIGH OF THE SEASON:

” .. and we’re hearing Motherwell have equalised …”

INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE OF THE SEASON:

Dado Prso, THAT night at Tynecastle.

While everyone else - especially celtic fans - remembers one decision by assistant referee Andrew Davis, this was probably the big Croat’s finest in a series of fine games for The Rangers. His first season at the club, after a year in which he played in the Champions League final for AS Monaco then starred for his country in the EURO 2004 finals in Portugal, he must have been knackered before he even saw Govan - yet he gave everything in every second of every game he played for us and it says it all that on a night where he didn’t score and was actually sent off, his overall play was the only thing which prevented Nando’s crucial last-minute penalty conversion being anything other than a consolation. Dado, at Gorgie, on Wednesday 2nd March 2005, was defence, midfield AND attack.

BEST LAUGH OF THE SEASON:

Neil Lennon spitting on a Gers scarf at The Copland Road End, hoping he’d get the same reaction a Gers player’d receive for spitting on a green and white rag at the Jock Stein End. Nope! - there was a kind of stunned embarrasment for him and then we just fell about laughing. The only thing he was spitting was the big dummy.

OFFICIAL OF THE SEASON:

Andy Davis. With Shuggie Dallas retiring, it’s good to know The Brotherhood has a new apprentice ready to come through

PLAYER OF THE SEASON:

5th place: Jean-Alain Boumsong: Not the best but probably the classiest defender I’ve ever seen in a Rangers jersey - held us together in August and September. Deserves his medal.

4th place: Marvellous Marvin Andrews: When he first partnered Boumsong you thought it would be the last time - Big Marv looked awful. By the end of the season he was playing against medical advice and in contempt of Mother Nature - and he was playing like the fittest, most determined, scariest centre-half you’ve ever seen.

3rd place: Ignacio Javier Novo. Nacho is a surly, crabbit looking we bundle of unrelenting malicious, explosive energy who doesn’t let his off-days get to him - he just plugs away and makes life hell for defenders. He was everything I wanted him to be when I heard we’d signed him - a revelation.

2nd place: Dado Prso - see “individual performance of the season” for my explanation of what we all know. If he’d been given the full ninety in more games he would have taken first … but, the way the big man plays, he would also have been dead by Christmas.

FIRST PLACE: FERNANDO RICKSEN.
Ended his first season at Ibrox as a joke, a liability. Completed last season as our captain, lifting the SPL trophy. Nando’s given up the booze and given up the disciplinary stupitness. Not a single red card and, for a man who spent most of the season running our midfield engine, to sustain just four yellow cards in 51 matches is something else. Yes, 51 games - Nando is the only man to have played in every competitive match of the 2004/2005 season for The Gers. He not only played in them but he set the tone for at least half of them. Despite such a gruelling schedule he was never seen to be “pacing himself” - he covered every blade of grass in almost every game and scored vital goals, always spectacularly and usually from free-kicks, in every domestic competition and Europe. Took over the armband from Stef when Der Goalie suffered his injury and has had no qualms about handing it over to Bazza for season 2005/2006. But we’ll always remenber the skill, apllication and THE GRACE with which Fernando Ricksen played all 51 games in the season he led Rangers to Championship number 51.

“Nice one Ricksen, Nice One son - Nice one Ricksen, let’s have another one … or ten.”