Cheers fight jeers but me fears end nears, for Eck. (GERS …1 ICT …1)

Maybe David Murray just wants to avoid the John Barnes comparison. Because it’s so blatantly unfair. The former Celtic boss was a trophyless joke losing to a lower league side in the cup - Alex McLeish is simply unable to make Rangers consistently successful. Nevertheless, sacking your manager after a bad result at home to Inverness Caledonian Thistle would coincide just a bit too much with the Kenny Dal-John Barnes calamity across the town.

We are the reigning champs and still very much involved the Champions League. Alex McLeish is a far classier gaffer than Barnes could ever dream of being. Eck deserves so much better than being splashed with even a coincidental drip of the paint from that particular brush. Maybe this is the main reason our current manager wont be sacked after the dropping of two points too many.

Practically, of course, Inverness are a far better side now than they were back in 2000. But they did lose 3-0 at home to Falkirk on Wednesday night.

Practically, of course, it’s very difficult to see the benefit in sacking a manager when we have a critical Champions League game to play in just three days time. But it’s also difficult to imagine that Eck has the ability to make Rangers win in Bratislava on Tuesday.

Still, for me, he’s earned that right - the right to fuck up our Champions League hopes in one last attempt to get his Rangers career back on track. The guy has given us some of the happiest memories of our Rangers supporting lives - some memories which, I’m sickened to say, certain Rangers fans were tonight determined to write-off in a traitorous desperation to prove the fucking obvious.

Alex McLeish isn’t taking Rangers where we want? No shit, Sherlocks! We can all see that. Blind Bears can see that. But actually denegrating some of the loveliest days of our history to overstate this point is just bewildering. If I hear one more Radio phone-in where Rangers fans tell other Rangers fans that 2002/2003 and 2004/2005 were “lucky” or “jammy” or more about Celtic failing than us winning then I’ll do something desperate. I’ll do something I’ll regret for the rest of my life. I’ll … I’ll … I’ll .. I’ll end up phoning Jim Traynor on Radio Scotland and actually disgracing myself by appearing on that fat git’s usually malevolant little programme.

BBC Scotland is, in all other respects, the best I can hear on the radio. Traynor winds Rangers fans up but he does it to Celtic fans just as vehemently. The only team he’s interested in is Jim Traynor FC. But his show had me sat in Safeway (sorry - Morrisons) car park at 5:30 tonight, with the engine running and my mouth open, as I listned to the sickening levels of vitriol directed at a member of The Rangers Family by others who’d seek to be in that particularly magnificent clique.

I eventually got my shopping (most of it liquid), I returned to my car and I switched the radio back on. By the time I got home I was picking up the receiver and dialling the number. Luckily for my self respect I didn’t get through. Luckily for Rangers’ self-respect a few of the saner members of our support eventually did. Unluckily, like most others these days, they’re so confused by what’s happening on the pitch and the reaction to it in the stands that they end up defending McLeish’s current side - they’re so confused that they pick a side in an extreme argument which benefits no-one.

If we’re not happy with the results just now it seems we have to HATE McLeish and boo the team off the pitch. But if we’re not into that it seems we have to be defending McLeish’s abilities to the hilt. No-one seems able to see the not-very-subtle fact that just because he’s not getting his job right it doesn’t make Eck a bad guy and that just because we like him as a person and loved his past achievements doesn’t mean we think he should be kept on as manager at the moment.

There is a middle ground, and it’s called SUPPORTING RANGERS.

This is always the way when there’s a “crisis”. Opinions are polarised and so is behaviour. We end up with the ridiculously emotional situation today where Rangers fans cheered and clapped the team off the pitch at half-time when we were losing 1-0 to ICT. I did it myself and it’s not like me to reward incompetence with praise but it wasn’ the performance we were clapping, it was The Rangers, lest they forget we’re behind them ALWAYS. When so many punters were again booing their own team, it was the only thing to do.

In the past, people like Konterman or Amoruso have attracted such extremes of reaction. My personal reaction has always been I can never boo my own team but if they haven’t been up to scratch I don’t cheer or applaud them either. We all know that no reaction can be the scariest reaction of all. (Especially those of us who’ve handed in a manuscript for a book!)Yet, today, it was actually ridiculously lovely when the oh-so-boring boo boys were slowly, gently and warmly drowned out by an increasing ripple of applause. I was out my seat shouting “Go ON THE TEDDY BEARS!”, before I knew it and before I got too choked. It was daft but it was nice - the silent majority had become sick of the noise made by the empty vessel minority.

McLeish must go? Yup - looks like it. But there’ll be no celebration from me and nothing but thanks for final day of the season in 2003 and 2005 and two titanic and one quietly lovely cup win against Celtic at Hampden.

The irony is that we actually gained a point on the league leaders today. The reality is that we’ve never managed to score more than one goal in any of our five SPL clashes with Inverness Caledonian Thistle, a club 12 decades younger than our own. This season and last we won our opening clash with the Higlanders by one goal to nil, hanging on defensively for the majority of the match. Other than that we’ve drawn 1-1, twice at Ibrox, once at Pittodrie. Two seasons, three grounds, five games - Caley Thistle always give us a hard time. Last season it didn’t matter because we eneded up champions. This season it’s just another stat with which to critically bludgeon McLeish.

We gained a point on Hearts today - historic unbeaten runs always come crashing to a halt at the hands of one’s derby rivals - but the fact is we should have gained three points on the Jambos. The fact is most of us felt we’d dropped another two points to Celtic today. Personally, I’m so unconvinced by Rangers this term that I want Hearts to keep winning lest the smellies win the league. The fact is, it doesn’t really mater about the wider picture when analysing The Rangers display today - it just wasn’t good enough.

It certainly was entertaining though. Albeit a perverse sort of entertainment. There was little finesse but bags of excitement. Part of you felt there was enough of an awakening determination in the side to actually merit a win. Peter Lovenkrands was outstanding - certainly by his own standards. Alan Hutton was immense for a man whose been out for so long with such a cruel injury and his return to right back allowed a tactical shift which so many of us have been desperate to see all season: Ricksen returned to the midfield.

Nando was quiet for long spells - it’ll take him a while to kick back into last season’s form after playing so many games at full back - but on closer analyisis he was closely involved in the key moments. He jumped with Brown, their ex-Ger goalie, to create the confusion and loose ball from which Stevie Thompson stabbed home the equaliser. He also drew about half the Caley Thistle bookings which eventually resulted in Graham Bayne being dismissed for the visitors with eight minutes left - a fact which amplifies the parlousness of this result. He also became one third of our own bookings and headed onto the bar from some distance in the first half.

But the only actual goal of the opening 45 came from ICT. Craig Dargo was first to a simple goal-kick-flick-on move and his dipping volley from twenty yards was unsaveable. It dipped and swerved from outside the zone of the keeper’s reach and down ito the very tightest angle of the top corner. It was an immense finish - the kind we’ve seen so many of into the Copland in first halfs down the years (Andreas Thom, Bobby Russell, Tam McManus, Stevie Crawford).

Everyone is already looking at Ronald Waterreus with extra-critical eye because the legendary Stefan Klos is parked on the bench, gloves at the ready. The Ron goes and makes his first 100% culpable mistake against Livvy on Wednesday. So many Bluenoses instantly blame Ronald for Dargo’s goal. I’m nost so sure. But he didn’t help himself by failing to put in a camera-friendly dive in the general direction of the ball. He just scrambled backwards and, knowing where his feet had to be to have any chance of actually getting to the thing, stumbled over at the last moment as he genuinely tried to get there - a lot of other keepers would have saved their own bacon by making a spectacular dive far too early. Ronald made himself look slow, in front of a crowd which contains so many scapegoat-hungry mouths.

That job of abuse-fodder has often gone to Peter Lovenkrands - a player who has me tearing what’s left of my hair out on more occassions than I care to remember. This time, however, Peter was the Rangers Man of The Match. Okay, Bazza and Prso are always the guys ACTUALLY running the show but we can’t give it to them every week and Alan Hutton, the sponsor’s choice today, was a charitable alternative. For me, however, the guy who was excelling himself was Peter. Not always successful but always getting the head down and genuinely having a go. His run from his own box to Caley’s six yard box in the second half had JOB-SAVING WINNER written all over it. Peter was felled and there was no penalty and no dream ending.

The penalty claim was turned down as it was a weak one - unlike that of Caley at the end of the first half. Right on front of me Bob Malcolm kicked a guy to the ground and then booted him again when he was on the ground. Bob, I’m afraid, was little short of a disaster at centre-half. The felah needs games. He still passes a ball immensely well but his deliberately languid style does not offer any room for quick movement or change of pace when things go wrong. He was deep-ended by the injuries to FanFan, Rodriguez and Sotirios - and he couldn’t really cope. Big Marv wasn’t as convincing by his side as we needed him to be. Marv couldn’t stop Bayne’s flick-on for the opener and none of the two were anywhere to be seen when Caley created their best chance of the game shortly afterwards. We should have been 2-0 down - only a finish as spectacularly bad by Morgan as Dargo’s had been good, was enough to keep the boos to a minimum.

Dado was obviously told to get through the middle this time. Today he was not to go forraging round the winds or even the inside-forward slots - he just went straight through the middle, looking for goals. With Chris Buurke simply unable to beat a man or hit the by-line and cross, this was never going to happen. McLeish, using what few players he has available, was right to put on Thompson alongside Dado and Stevie was right not to celebrate when he scored. He was having a go back at the fans who slag him so harshly when he makes an arse of things, never mind that he’s also thrown in because of the injuries to Buffel and Novo, and this little cameo of restraint summed up the whole situation:

Stevie owes us a goal for being so crap so maybe he shouldn’t have celebrated what was, after all, the least he could do for us. But his motivation in turning back to the centre-circle with head down rather than belting for the Copland with arms raised, was that his own fans aren’t just frustrated with him - they’re HATEFUL of him. At least, the ones he hears are. In that case, maybe we were lucky Stevie didn’t actually turn round and give us the viccies when he netted. I, personally, wouldn’t have blamed him.

Certain of the players and, increasingly, the manager do not have the skills to be of Rangers class - but they do have the decorum and self-restraint of personality. As people, they’re class acts and that, for me, is as much a part of being a Ranger as meeting our high demands for trophies. However, as was demonstrated when the team went down the tunnel at the break today, these employees should know that the idiots only have their way when the success that attracted them first breaks down into a bad run of form. Eventually the quiet majority comes out to reciprocate the genuine efforts of the players and staff.

It’s not good enough to keep them all in their jobs but it will always give them a place in our hearts.