Lies, damn lies and cold hard facts (Hibees … 2 GERS …1)

Last time Rangers scored into the away end at Easter Road thanks to a deflection off Gary Cauldwell, with Celtic losing their corresponding SPL fixture of the same weekend, it was one of the happiest days of our Rangers-Follow-Following lives.

Six months later, a recurrence of these particular events, in a wholly different context, should be the lowest day of ANY Rangers supporter who ever lived. According to the record books anyway:

From about August this year we’ve heard Ragers fans complaining “This is the worst it’s been at Ibrox in twenty years”. I’ve always said that’s a load of garbage and today we have official confirmation. This isn’t the worst Rangers have been since the immediate Pre-Souness era. This is the worst Rangers have been EVER.

Not a mere two decades - this is the garbagest run of results we’ve had in THIRTEEN decades, since 1872 in fact. Not once in our 133-year history have The Teddy Bears gone 8 straight games without a victory. The other lovely stat bouncing about today was the one about November: It’s one hundred and fourteen years since The Gers have gone the whole month of November without a win.

As they said in 1891, in for a penny in for a groat …

We’re as many points off the BOTTOM of the SPL as we’re off the top. Not only are we fifteen points behind a table-topping Celtic team which yesterday lost at home to bottom club Dunfermline but we’re 14 points behind second-placed Hearts and eleven behind third-placed Hibs. Only two goals seperate us from Kilmarnock in fifth.

We’ve won one domestic away game all season, at Inverness in Augus, days before we won our only other away game of ANY sort this campaign, the 2-1 Champions League Qualifier in Cyprus against Anorthosis Famagusta…

Okay. Here, at this point, we can perhaps lever our way into the lie which hides behind any set of stats. Rangers have played four European away matches this season and only lost one, and that was by a single goal at the San Siro against Inter. When the most any other Scottish Club has managed on the road in the Champions League is a single point in nine attempts, Alex McLeish deserves high praise for what he’s done in continetal terms this campaign. It’s bordering on the historic.

However, the statistics mostly exude truth. Our domestic form is also historic - historically bad. In non-continental terms, Rangers are making me incontinent. They look impotent. Our gaffer seems incompetent. A new manager is imminent.

Hibs were great today. Let’s not deny the hosts the credit they’re due. A fantastic set of young players - and Gary Smith - are slowly coming to the boil and when we play Hibs at a full Easter Road, when the home side are rekindling their hopes of WINNING the SPL then it is indeed a very special time for Scottish Football.

Also - let’s not deny a succesful Rangers manager his excuses - we were without Prso, Novo, Buffel, Ricksen and Rodriguez today; players who, while not all solid performers this season, have provided various degrees of effectiveness which would have been supremely beneficial today. In a match which we did only lose by one goal, the availability of just one of these guys could have made all the difference.

However. We are Rangers. We don’t accept excuses. We only look for reasons. And, I’m afraid, there were more than enough players on that Edinburgh pitch who have shown themselves to be of enough ability to perform WAY, WAY, WAY better than they did today. Francis Jeffers has never done so in a Rangers jersey but most of the others have. For all I’ve defended Alex McLeish’s right to patience and dignified treatment from the Rangers support, I’ve never taken the increasingly prevalent media line that the players are to blame as much as the manager. For all Alex deserves praise for his very recent achievements with The Rangers and his on-going success in Europe, and for all I think him a great ambassador for our club in his public behaviour, when the team do not perform the manager takes the blame.

His honesty is praiseworthy, his candour in agreeing his side didn’t play well enough is admirable - but it makes him no less at fault. If you know they aren’t doing the business - we ALL know that - it makes it no less your responsibility to ensure they do.

Things have now officially gone on too long. “The chairman said we’ll review things in December” said Alex after the defeats at the homes of both the Glasgow and Edinburgh Erin. Well, our fixtures for November are over. For Rangers it IS now December. People like me, desperate that we don’t part company with a two-times League-winning gaffer one second too soon are now without any doubt that it’s the right thing to do. All those aforementioned stats scream it, one look at Rangers’ play in Scotland this season screams it even louder:

December it is. The heart of the winter, the depth of the domestic season - three more SPL games and we’re at the mid-way point of the campaign. Everything which has happened since July points to us dropping at least two more points next week at home to Falkirk. We’re at the point where Alex will either be sacked or will resign after the Inter game. I so badly wanted it to be the latter - he’s given us times so magical that he deserves the right to go out on the unbelievable high that progress from the group stage of the Champions League would provide. But he’s making us so bad in Scotland that he’s in danger of cancelling out the unique achievements with equally unique lows.

Put the Old Firm whitewash of 2003/2004 up against the Treble of the previous season. Let the qualification for two Champions League tournaments cancel out the Viktoria Zizkov debacle and the failure to progress from last season’s UEFA Cup Group stage. Let our failure to beat Hibs in the 2003/2004 CIS Cup semi and guarantee ourselves at least one trophy, be wiped out by the two great Cup wins in 2001/2002 which took in two dynasty-defying wins over O’Neill’s Celtic. You’re still left with a magical League championship win last season and a spare League cup triumph - but these last credits on Eck’s Rangers account are being debited before our eyes by phenomenally bad 2005/2006 domestic turnover.

Alex McLeish is now in a position where he HAS to take us into the knock-ot stage of the Champions League to even begin to deserve to remain as Rangers manager. Such European progress was always dreamed of as a fantastic extra at Rangers - it should never be a necessity to save our season. When you’re gambling small money on long odds then you’re getting too desperate. Eck may have shortened our price for Champions League progression to 2 or 3 to 1 - and guaranteeing us at least a Uefa cup place was a great saver bet - but when Rangers go into December looking as likely to be relegated as they are to win the SPL then we’ve got to start using a different tipster.

The most depressing thought I had today was not any of those aforementioned stats but the sick suspicion that maybe it’s the players who psyche themselves up for the big Champions League games. The manager would certainly seem unable to do anything for them when they need a bit of second party help to motivate themselves for games against Artmedia or anyone in Scotland. It’s a wholly unfair and almost certainly innacurate musing but playing so well against Inter away and Porto twice in amongst such unremitting dross at all other times, leads one to such thoughts.

Hibs soaked up the pressure for the first hour at Ibrox before beating us 3-0 the first time we met them this season. Today they went about it slightly back to front. They blew us out the water in the first half of this one. It could have been four or five before half-time. In the second period we fought our way back into things and enjoyed a lot of posession with occassional bouts of pressure. But Hibs still won.

Sproule took Alan Hutton to the cleaners on many an occassion. Once in the first half it led to the Ulsteman whipping a ball across the face of our goal which Riordan tapped in at the back post for 1-0. In the second half it led to a great point-blank save from Waterreus to stop the little speed-meister taking his tally to four against Rangers in two games. O’Connor made it 2-0 to Hibs with a wonderfully skilful and cool finish to a wonderfully constructed move, just seconds after McLeish had taken Alex Rae off for Hemdani. Our desperation and dissaray was made manifest in that minute of activity. The entire first half was about Hibs’ dominance and style and Rangers’ complete lack of attacking play.

We subbed J-Rod ’round about the same time at Tynecastle this season - and never looked like winning the game there. We subbed Ricksen at Parkhead in 2000 after twenty odd minutes and lost 6-2. By the half-hour mark today we really could have been onto a similair whupping. But we hung on til the break - Eck was right to make the Rae change. Stevie Thompson came on at half time for the inordinately useless Jeffers and, as usual, Stephen quietly improved things off the bench. We had a target up front. The ball came to Bazza at the edge of the box and he drilled it low, off an outstrecthed leg of the Hibernian captain’s and into the net.

Lovenkrands also joined the action in the second half and, had the ref been a bit kinder, the Dane would’ve made a more concrete contribution. But Peter’s too much of a diver and Dougal was having none of it today. It was left to Hamed Namouchi to provide the glaring miss which could have drawn us level and, with Hibs having recently swapped a two-goal lead for a home defeat by Falkirk, Hamed’s swinger over the bar from ten yards might well have cost us an unlikely victory.

Hibs were always dangerous on the break though, and deserved their win.

We should make January transfer window bids for Kris Boyd of Killie - the SPL’s top scorer - and Hibs’ Scott Brown. Both are Bluenoses, both are excellent. Both would come to a Rangers team under new management because, while their stars rise, Alex McLeish’s sun has definitely set.