THREE-NIL TO THE CHAMPIONS (GERS … 3 Arabs …0)

Steven Thompson. Now there’s a conundrum - a conundrum of the sort which would put the most avid Countdown viewer through torments of Faustian proportions. Sorry, of U-S-F-T-N-I-A-A proportions.

That was probably the big man’s last game for us today. Kris Boyd came on at half-time. Literally. Scotland’s current top scorer was on the pitch during the interval between each half. He didn’t break an ankle going up or down the tunnel and didn’t snap his wrist handing over the big cardboard cheque to the Rangers Pools winner - so far so good. But the arrival of the Killie wunderkind means that, even at supposedly hapless Rangers, Steven T is surplus to rquirements and will leave by climbing out the same transfer window through which Boyd has just sneaked onto the Ibrox bench.

Thompson himself may not have had the same goal tally as Boyd, but he arrived at The Palace as a very similair type of signing: An early-twenties, six-foot striker from an SPL rival - a Rangers fan born in the west, a player of whom good things were expected but who didn’t cost too much and was on the back-foot from the start with beardom coz he wisnae a foreigner. Steve’s first Rangers goal came against Dundee and what looks like his last, today, was a neat nod home from a Thomas Buffel cross, against Dundee United, into the same end, The Copland Road, at the same time of year, the festive period.

In-between scoring these goals against his old derby rivals and his former employers, Steve has spent three years embodying the dichotomy of the Alex McLeish era.

No-one in Red, White and Blue will regard him as a succesful Rangers player. He’s a lovely bloke and he gives it everything but the Rangers support, cruel and spolied as we are, will groan or chuckle whenever Mr Thompson’s name is recalled in pub conversations or internet chats down the years. Whenever Steven Thompson started a game for Rangers it would invariably end badly for him or the whole team (look at last week against Dunfermline).

But when he comes on as a sub, look at the stats.

Please, someone, look at the stats! … and get back to me with them. I think, upon close analysis, the following point of mine will hold up: I first remember considering this point about Steven Thompson after the 2003 Scottish Cup final. We were 1-0 up against Dundee but toiling. We were going for the treble but the second leg of that triple-whammy had been achieved under such draining circumstances that six days later, at Hampden, we were in danger of eventually giving Dundee their first Scottish Cup in almost a century. But then Steven came on. He wasn’t spectacular but he was a handful. He gave Dundee something to do and, more importantly, he gave our defenders and midfielders a break. It wasn’t noticed but it won us the cup - secured the treble.

The week before, against Dunfermline, he came on as a sub and scored the second last goal of our 6-1 win. Arteta wrapped it up but it was Steven’s goal which, technically, won us the league. He won another league title with us last season and he chucked a League Cup in there too. He came on for Novo in the 5-1 win over Motherwell at Hampden in March.

Steven Thompson is, in fact, a super sub. The phenomenon I noticed at the 2003 Cup Final made me think about it every time he did come on as a sub, made me note the end result. There are very few times, I’ll wager, when Steven Thompson’s introduction to a Rangers game has made the score-line any worse (He comes on against Abderdeen at Pittodrie in August - we’re 2-1 down, we end up losing 3-2 but he sets up a goal for Lovenpants and it’s the defence’s fault we lost the game). And there are quite a few matches in which his introduction has made it better (He comes on at 0-0 today and by the final whistle it’s 3-0 to Rangers). Yet he gets no thanks. Yet he gets no credit. Yet he leaves Rangers almost certainly despising the massed rank of the Rangers support.

He scored against Artmedia this season and had a moment of intense, tear-jerking catharsis … with himself. He didn’t run over to us, the Gers punters, when he netted in the Tehelne Pole stadium - he just collapsed on the turf with the knowledge he’d scored in Europe’s premier competition, he congratulated himself with the knowledge that he was a real player. He celebrated his goal today, as he has done previously at The Brox this season, by walking away from the cheering supporters all round him and simply heading back for the centre circle. He knows he’s not appreciated.

Within a minute of making it 2-0 for Rangers and almost certainly wrapping up the points, Steve was volubly groaned at for failing to win some sort of midfield fifty-fifty. Yet Steven had actually put in the header which led to the first goal and later made a little run and cut-back which teed up Chris Burke’s cross for the third. Colin Samuel’s injury-caused removal from the United attack in the first half may have removed the threat of a Dundee United win - but it was Steven Thompson’s introduction in the second half which ensured a Rangers victory. He played a vital, decisive part in each of our goals. No matter. As we do with Alex McLeish, we see something unspectacular and we want to get rid of it - McLeish’s trophies and his Champions League achievement speak of success but, as we do with Steven Thompson, we want more than stats, we want more than the bare minimum: We want style and grandeur.

Sometimes, we want fucking shooting.

And I say “we” because I’m as guilty as anyone else at Ibrox. Okay I mite make a point of never bad-mouthing or groaning at the players while I’m actually at the game - I might be from the annoyingly “we’ll support ye ever more” brigade - but it doesnae stop me laying out the blame on this here site … when I think I have to. I want Steven to leave. That miss at Dunfermline last week eventually cost us two points and any chance of a real comeback in the league (that’s what happens when ye start a game, Steve) but my fitbaw fan’s instinct for on-field perfection fights with my anorak’s intinct to be realistic, to be pargamatic, to look at the results with cold, hard objectivity.

We’re all brutally subjective in that we all love Rangers myopically and wish ill on anyone who opposes Rangers. But within even that law of unreason us Bluenoses find ourselves having favourites and those we simply can’t take to. Sometimes we have to ignore what a player has done in the past, good or bad, to properly appreciate what their value is to us at present. Sometimes we have to take a manager or player or Chairman’s entire career at Ibrox into account before we can be too damning of their past few performances. I don’t quite know what to make of it all these days - All I’m gonnae say, in respect of Thompson, McLeish, Murray, post-millenial Rangers and what happened today is “Peter Lovenkrands”.

That’s nine goals in six games now for Peter. And you might be hard pushed, all of a sudden, to remember that Steven Thompson was probably preferable to Lovenkrands as a striker for the majority of the Rangers support for the best part of year. Peter Lovenkrands was every bit the unappreciated, derided, almost despised player that Steve now finds himself to be. All it takes is a few weeks and Thompson could be doing what Peter is doing now. Setting the heather on fire and being hailed a hero. In fact, when we look at today’s game, Lovenkrands couldn’t get his goal til Thompson came on … strictly speaking.

It was a strange day, tho. Not least for Yours Blueley who stepped into his car at 2pm, switched the stereo onto BBC Radio Scotland and wandered why David Begg and Gordon Smith sounded like they were at a packed Ibrox with the teams coming down the tunnel, rather than at a deserted Ibrox with the first few fans starting to enter the stadium and wandered why the road to the Clyde Tunnel was so unbelievably quiet for a matchday. It was because Rangers and Dundee United were indeed coming down the Ibrox tunnel and because I’d thought it was a 3pm Kick-off.

The stadium announcer at East End Park on Monday had told all the Pars fans to remember their game versus Falkirk was a 2pm kick-off. I remeber standing there, moving up in down on my toes as some 12-year-old caled “Zane” did keepie-uppies in the middle of their pitch and ballboys stood all over the field with large letters of the alphabet in their hands, wondering why Falkirk wanted their game to start an hour earlier than everyone else’s? Perhaps, I thought, The Bairns only had enough dosh for a half hour of floodlighting? Perhaps the police wanted to avoid a traffic jam with the big crowds heading for the East Stirling or Stenhousemuir games the same day?

Nah - it was because everyone in the SPL was kicking off at 2pm today. It’s Hogmanay. Stuff shuts earlier. Including my brain. I was drinking with the loyalest member of the Arthur Numan Loyal last nite too. Not that kick-off times ever come into the conversation. We’re usually discussing how shite our work is and why McLeish must go/stay.

After today, he stays. But the result was as surprising as the parking space I found so close to the ground. The one thing about starting your journey as the game’s kicking off is that everyone else is already there, already parked - the roads are clear. I was in my seat for the 19th minute of play and, from what I garnered from the forty five thousand others who’d managed to work out what time to be there, Rangers had been a bit slow in turning up too. I hadn’t missed anything except Dundee United taking us close twice and Rangers looking slouggish all round. It continued that way into the second half. It was dire. It was turgid. But we’d stopped looking like we’d lose a goal. We’d stopped looking like Dundee United would even get into our half. Then we started looking turgid and dire in Dundee United’s box. Then a Lovenkrand’s overhead kick fell at the feet of Buffel and we were a goal up with just over 20 minutes left.

Then, just as my neigbour and I started wondering when was the last time Rangers had won a game by two clear goals - Motherwell at home over two months agao - Steven made it 2-0 to Rangers with seven minutes remaining and, just as my neighbour and I started wondering when was the last time Rangers had won a game by three clear goals - Dunfermline at home, three months ago - Lovenkrands got up like an old style centre-forward, like Steven Thompson, to head us three-nil up with three minutes left.

The game ended after two minutes of injury time which were as care-free and boring as Monday’s five minutes had been dangerous and damning and a suddenly half-empty Ibrox didn’t even bother wondering about when was the last time we beat Dundee United in a league game - give ye a clue, the first goal that day was scored by one Nuno Capucho.

So something is done right. But all the stuff that’s gone wrong seemed to outweigh it. I think McLeish should go - still. I think the game today was awful - still. But I said in the rant below, the preview piece, that I’d be shocked if we beat Dundee United and even more so if we did it by any more than one goal. Credit where it’s due. Hey, we’ve gaimed on Hibs and Killie - even if it was just because they didn’t play today - and we’ll gain on one or both of Hearts and Celtic - because they play each other next year, tomorow.

The fact that there are FOUR teams on which we can “gain” points is the problem. That’s why today’s result was appreciated only as much as Steven Thompson’s career. But, as I said of Steve, look at the stats: We had two kids at full back - Alan Lowing doing particularly well as Stevie Smith has been playing the last few games. We had a midfielder at centre-half - well done Mr Utility, Ian Murray, in for the suspended Soti, the injured J-Rod and the abandoned Pierre-Fanfan We had Nacho Novo starting his first game in months - it showed but he’s got it under his belt with no damage done to the score-line, unlike his sub appearances at Killie and Dunfermline. We had Nando Ricksen whupped off the operating table to replace the suspended Mr Malcolm - again it showed. We’ve almost forgot about Dado, we’ve gone through so much without him - but he’s still missing. All said and, well, done, this was a job well done.

Gordon Chisholm’s indian sign over Rangers has at last been exorcised and Dundee United’s SPL run of unlosingness against Rangers has been killed off convincingly. Please don’t let him lose his job before their Scottish Cup game tho - God, how embarassing for us if losing heaviliy to Rangers is now considered a sacking offence. COME ON! We’ve not lost in December after failing to win in November and, I suppose, we’ve won three out our last four games.

At the end of the day at the end of the year in which we won an SPL we weren’t supposed to, all but chucked away an SPL we were supposed to romp and qualified from one of those Champions League groups we just never get out of - the most surprising thing about today was that we did what we were supposed to. The Champions beat the strugglers by 3 goals to 0 - it wasn’t a memorable game but that was explained by all the injures and suspensions. We started badly but slowly and inexorably ground out first the proper result and then the proper score-line. That’s the kind of thing Rangers teams with missing first-pick players are supposed to do. I don’t care about how spectacular it is - at Rangers, the spectacular thing is our consistent trophy-winning. We’ll keep the unexpected for Europe - in Scotland, at Hogmanay, I’ll just hope the New Year is unbelievably dull and unspectacular. Rangers can be like Steven thompson - everyone complains about us, everyone mocks us, but ye just can’t argue with the stats:

At Ibrox, the year 2005 ended, Champions 3 Visitors 0.

Happy New Year, folks.