Stuck in the Clyde Tunnel (GERS … 5 Bully Wee … 2 After Extra Freakin Time)

Three Govan games in a week, three victories in three different competitions and a total of eleven Rangers goals scored by seven different Gers and one Kilmarnock defender: You’d think we’d be happy.

Hell, naw.

After weeks of trying to stick up for Big Eck McLeish in the face of criticism from a lot of Bears and Bearettes I now have to finally admit it: We’re just noh right. Something about our team smells a bit pishy.

And the worst of it is, we cannae go completely stark raving about it … either way. There’s not enough wrong for a crisis but there’s not enough right for blinding optimism.

A club third from bottom of the Bell’s League First Division can take the lead against Rangers and take us to extra time but the club which won the European Cup 16 months ago cannae escape Ibrox with anything other than sore heads.

Ye want to condemn The Gers for tonight but ye cannae because of what happened seven nights’ previous. We want to laud the victory over Porto as the dawn of a new era but we cannae … because of what happened against Clyde.

We’re one Tynecastle win away from blowing the SPL race wide open and reinstalling ourselves as firm title favourites. We’re one excellent and two expected results away from creating Scottish football history in Europe. We’re safely into the next round of our defence of the CIS League Cup.

Sounds smooth. Sounds brill. And, in hard terms, it is. But, watching Rangers, you can see we just aren’t playing in any way smooth or brill.

Some teams aren’t “pretty” to watch. Some teams specialise in winning ugly and akward. But we aren’t merely a misunderstood team these days. Seen enough games down the years to recognise winning football doled out like bad medicine. This isn’t it. This is bad football with a lot of sweetener on top. You’re never sure if we’re gonnae score and neither are you ever sure we’ll keep a clean sheet.

Here’s a bit of Hemingwayesque symbolism for ye: I’m in the motor tonight, heading for The Brox, sat at Anniesland Cross, 50 minutes before kick off. Usually this would be ample. By the time I get into my seat up the back of the Govan, however, we’re 1-0 up and I’ve missed the first 9 minutes of the game.

I knew the Clyde tunnel would be down to a single lane but it’s never been as bad as it was tonight. Stuck in the low gears for 40 minutes, smoke starts piling out the over-heating bonnet. The line of traffic is crawling but it won’t stop so I can’t get out and do anything (like pouring water down the spark plugs or greasing the carborator or splidgering the dooberynut … I’m not much of a mechanic) and I’m fekin sure I’m turning off the road: I didn’t make Ibrox on Saturday - it’s not happening two games on the trot.

But the Clyde Tunnel - THE CLYDE - was ruining my fun already. THE CLYDE was being a pain in the ass, it stalled an evening I had planned to be relaxing. See where I’m going with this? Eh! How about it, troops - is this quality writing or WHAT??!!

Come on! How totally literary am I??!! Emile Zola would be struggling to come up with this kind of stuff. Clyde FC - CLYDE Tunnel! Problems - pain-in-the-ass - threat of night being ruined but I/we GET THERE IN THE END! Eh?! U-huh!? Is my car gonnae have long term damage?? Is McLeish’s team just smoking cos they need a bit of coolant down the engine or, ye know, is there long-term damage .. etc etc.

Man! I’m wasted on this site. This is a pyoor quality read.

Anyway, worst of it was there was no fitbaw on BBC Radio Scotland so I had to lsiten to Mark Lawson interviewing Kevin Spacey about his latest attempt to get himself recognised as a stage actor rather than a Hollywood screen star. I mean, buying the Old Vic is hardly the way to go about it, Kev - and listening to you and Trevor Nunn whittering on about Shakey’s iambic pentameter in Richard II isn’t gonnae do much more to convince me you’re anything more than a megalomaniacal …

On the way home the traffic was better, the tunnel was less congested and I found Mark Radcliffe on Radio 2, having a laugh and playing some Zeppelin and some Aretha. Chain, chain, ChAAAAAAYYYN …

I missed Buffel’s opener but I did see the punters in the Main Stand side of the Copland Rear leaping out their seats to celebrate it - as I walked along Broomloan Road. Some Clyde neds were having a walk-past rammy with another tardy Ger as I slipped into the eerily empty turnstyles.

No Bazza, Prso or Ricksen. 20,000 missing Gers fans. But, essentially, there was only one reserve on the pitch. The little right-back making his debut gave away the penalty which allowed Clyde to go 2-1 up on 72 minutes and, in the half hour before that, The Bully Wee seemed to finally understand that getting the ball between him and Andrews was the way to break us down. However, Alan Lowing’s first-half performance seemed the perfect example of what games like this should be about: Fringe players getting a run-out and one untried youth having his night in the floodlight glare.

But Rangers seemed to want to ACT like this was an easy game rather than go about actually MAKING it so:

Pair wee Alan Lowing almost ended up at the centre of a disaster - with those around him being entirely to blame.

Waterreus, Kyrgiakos, Novo, Murray and Lovenkrands have all been starters this season - key players. Bob Malcolm and Marvin Andrews have dropped out of the reckoning lately but are experienced first-teamers. Buffel is central to our efforts. Jeffers and Bernard have been deep-ended since arriving from the heights of Premiership football. There’s no excuse for what these players allowed to happen BEFORE the game was won.

They were supposed to have Clyde done and dusted by half-time. We went in 1-0 up after 45 and after one of those “someone’s bound to clear it eventually - oh, erm, no - it seems to be in the back of our net” goals sent the brilliantly exotic 1,000 away fans berserk on 50 minutes, it all got really embarassing. So much for ringing the changes at the interval to give all the key players a rest before Tynecastle.

Instead, we had the ignominious sight of Barry Ferguson being drafted in to replace the utterly immobile Bob Malcolm as captain and midfield fulcrum. Then we went 2-1 down. Jeffers was useless but I think the service had a lot to do with it - big Federico Nieto came on for the first time I can remember since the 0-0 with Borussia Moenchengladbach in July.

Lovenkrands and Buffel dissapeared for ages but retained their places as potential providers. Novo is thoroughly sick of playing out wide and, despite a few mazy runs along the by-line, went off for Namouchi.

As it turned out, the Clyde goalie was the best provider of a clear-cut Rangers chance - four minutes after we went 2-1 down, he let the ball through his legs for Buffel to pounce and equalise. In extra-time the tall guys took over - Nieto at least did his confidence some good with an offside volley which counted for 3-2 and a terribly acute-angled header into the far corner for 5-2. Big Marv got number four in his expected style.

We were only granted the planning permission for the casino complex - but The Teddy Bears were playing Roulette of a very Russian kind tonight.

It is exciting and sounds like a step in the right direction businesswise but we won’t know til 2007 at the earliest if Las vegas Sands can go ahead. A lot of excitement but very little substance:

And there it is again. That equivocal, ambivalent feeling: All the very best sides, in the best seasons of their life, will drop it a notch in a no-win Cup game against fiesty minnows. All the biggest guns will dally with disaster at least once a season but most of them come out the other side just fine. Rangers did emerge with a victory here. Eventually it became a wide-enough margin of victory. But there’s so much else unsure about our team and our manager this season that no-one is yet able to dismiss the reality of Clyde taking us to extra time as “Just one of those things” nor diagnose it as the most prominent sign yet of a deep-rooted malaise.

Tynecastle will provide a more accurate x-ray.

Or, in my case, MOT.