Heat, light; p*sh, sh*te!(Somnambulant Celts …0 Garbage GERS … 0)

He tried two pairs of boots, two positions and - by the look of his chalk-white napper - two bottles of factor 15, but still Chris Bruke couldn’t help summing up this rather tragic showing by Rangers at Parkhead: He ran his guts out, he tried his honest best, he kept Celtic occupied - but he lacked that decisive cutting edge. Whether it’s in the mind or in the feet, Rangers just don’t have it.

As he screamed into the Celtic box early in the first half, the ball spinning towards him with the Hooped defence splayed open, ready for the taking, a lot of us simply didn’t believe Chris was ever gonnae score.

Nothing against the wee man. Any neutral, any pessimist Celtic fan, any new-born or amnesiac Rangers fan could have been forgiven for thinking, as the ginger winger streaked from the sunshine of the midfield into the shade of the penalty box and towards the white spherical object of all our desires that “yup - this is it - first blood to Rangers”. But not those of us who’ve watched the same old repeat show at Parkhead for the last four years.

Burke blasted over when it was easier to hit the goal and the only real surprise of this game was Celtic’s subsequent failure to score a last-minute winner.

Alex McLeish seems to think, judging by his gutless pre-match and clueless post-match comments that this was some sort of positive result. Maybe, in light of the fact he’s only triumphed once at Parkhead in his 4-and-a-half years as Ibrox gaffer, he could be said to have a point about the point we left with. However, the sheer predictability of our inability to score - even on the back of some genuinely dangerous sustained possession - speaks more sense than the man who engineered our tactics: Eck clearly wanted this game to be a fitting tribute to him by his players in his last derby match in charge. If it is so it is only in his head. He is so desperate to believe the players paid him that tribute that he tailored his tone before and after the game - he tried to sell us a draw as a triumph.

When he hadn’t lost any of his first six Old Firm derbies, draws were indeed seen as triumphs for Eck. Two SPL 1-1s in his first half-season at the helm were favourably contextualised by two seminal Cup triumphs in Hampden Old Firmers. The league had been lost by Advocaat in the first half of the season anyway - draws were fine, especially when the second one stopped Celtic achieving a 100% home record for the only time in their history.

The last time we scored in the first half of a match at Parkhead - the autumn of 2002 - the game ended 3-3 and we won the treble at the end of the season: Draws in Old Firm games were still more than okay for Alex and for Rangers.

We’ve managed only three more goals at Parkhead in the subsequent three-and-a-half years, two of them in one match. It’s now been five games since we scored against Celtic in either the first or second half. Old Firm draws really aren’t any good for Rangers anymore. A draw today was really quite bad.

Prso, so stretched as an athlete by his footballing integrity and the inability of those around him, ran himself into dead-ends and into the ground. When he did penetrate he was usually so knackered that his cross or shot was lacking the necessary conviction or accuracy. His brilliant chest control followed by a header, at the edge of a packed six-yard box, was touched brilliantly onto the post by Boruc and away for a corner. However,again, the brilliance was all in the eyes of the Celtic fans or the neutral; For us, so few minutes after Burke’s horror miss and so many years since we possessed more than a snowball’s chance at the celtic hell hole, it just wasn’t good enough from our new captain.

Hemdani did well, Gavin Rae did even better in his first competitive start for two years - but they only did well by our current domestic standard: That says it all. Bazza finally demanded to go under the knife and the jury was left hung as to whether he would have improved our lot today.

The huffing and puffing from Rangers subsided after our opening 15 minutes of second half pressure. Thereafter I waited for the long-range lob or volley from a Thompson or a Sutton, right into the roof of our net. But the fact those players are gone, the fact Celtic are incapable currently of such last-minute winners, is proof of the real victory here: Our opponents were asleep for ninety minutes yet still we couldn’t take them. Celtic, founded as a charitable organisation, did all they could to assist Rangers in our desperate need for SPL points. Strachan’s charges looked every inch the tired, disinterested, demotivated collection of SPL champions who virtually refused to break sweat because, frankly, this was all a bit beneath them: Their job is done for the season and our one remaining target is so pathetic that even our most bitter rivals don’t even feel the need to jeapordise it:

If Celtic are hammered by Hearts next week I don’t want to hear one single Gers fan claiming there’s any kind of “lying down” involved on the part of the Parkhead side: They were almost horizontal TODAY, against US. They’re not trying to lose - they just have no material need to win. Celtic are already in the close season mindset.

Even Roy Keane couldn’t be arsed this afternoon. Neil Lennon wore his black gloves in the midday sun as this was the only way he could make the game more challenging for himself. Christ on a bike, Celtic were almost GIVING us the points! We were trying our guts out and STILL - yet again! - we couldn’t score a single fucking goal at Parkhead, never mind actually win a game there. The sheer inevitablity of it, the sheer predictability that even from glaring chances we would not put the ball in either of the parkhead nets, is one aspect of the McLeish era to which we today bid the fondest of farewells.

To be fair to the Ginger Gaffer, there were other, more historical reasons for pre-match doubts today. Not since one Alex Miller - last seen running round the Old Trafford pitch celebrating an FA Cup semi-final victory with the reigning European champions - smacked a crazy volley from the edge of the box into the top corner of Peter Latchford’s net, have Rangers won at parkhead and not actually gone on to win the league. That was 1980/81 season. That was quarter of a century ago. On the last day of last season, with our only Celtic Park victory in five years just a few months old, this record was my one sustaining hope that Motherwell could do us the favour of all favours: We’d won at parkhead therefore we must win the league. Going into this game today, having already lost the league, we simply waited for the other side of the equation to show itself.

In my pre-match desperation I tried to turn it round: Alex Miller’s winner in August 1980 denoted the last time Rangers had won at parkhead and failed to play in the following season’s European Cup! AHA!! That’s a historical grain which a Rangers win at parkhead today would NOT have gone against. Especially after events on Saturday:

Sectarianism? Who says we’re sectarian??! Who says we’re anti-Irish??! In Tennent’s Bar yesterday and then in the Aragon, some Bluenoses were heartily cheering the Embra Erin, lustily backing old Hibernia as their scores came through on Sky Sports news. If you’d backed Run For Paddy at 33-1 to win the Scottish Grand National you’d have been one very happy Rangers fan in that pub, watching those big screens as ye sank those big pints, thanking all things Irish in name. You’d have thought this was the chance we were looking for to catch Hearts in the battle for the second Champions League qualifying spot.

Yet, after the big “against racism and Sectarianism” bamnners from both the Jungle Bhoys and the Blue Order & Rangers Assembly at today’s game, we’re faced with the prospect of taking the tempering of Old Firm bittereness just a shade too far: We now actually WANT CELTIC TO WIN next Sunday, against them Jambos! Rangers have been so poor domestically this season and so poor in Old Firm games for the last three and a half years that we only have ourselves to blame for such quandries of emotion, such torturing of our loyalties.

The other thing to be watched on sky in boozers yestarday was another derby with some finality about it - the last North London version at Highbury, with Thierry Henry coming off the bench to show that Arsenal can indeed win the Champions League and can indeed, therefore, put Celtic into the qualifiers of next season’s edition of Europe’s top competition, rather than straight into the group stages. Hopefully, they will there encounter another Artmedia. With everyone jumping his horribly hooped ship, we can pray Strachan will sink like a lead balloon at the first mini-hurdle once again. But we would only have the right to gloat if we went one stage further in the same competition. Pepe Le Guen could surely negotiate the qualifying rounds and get us back in our natural environment of the Euro Big Time. But, the man who is currently in charge, may well have our French gaffer ensconced in the UEFA Cup qualifiers in July, leaving us unable to justly laugh at any horror which befalls the celtic hordes in a superior competition.

If Alex McLeish’s last Old Firm game at Ibrox reminded us why he’s leaving, then his last Old Firm game at Parkhead reminded us why that leaving has taken so long: He always does just enough - JUST ENOUGH - to keep us hanging in there. It is, quite frankly, a testament to his managerial skills that he can win just 8 out of 25 Old Firm games in charge of Rangers, and just 1 at parkhead, and still have two SPL titles, two Scottish Cups and three league cups to his name after four-and-a-half years. He always does enough, Alex, to JUSTIFY his position, to keep the sack at a safe distance. But he never does enough to inspire, he never does enough to make himself a true legend, a true favourite. This, despite securing a treble and one of our greatest ever runs in European competition.

We could have lost today and still gone on to secure second spot - no-one, perversely, would thank Big Eck for it. We could ultimately lose second spot but have won 3-0 today - some of us, equally perversely, would have loved Eck for that. But a nil-nil today and relying on other teams - one of which we really dislike - to catch Hearts for us is what Alex McLeish’s reign is all about: We’ll maybe get there in the end but it will be at the very end and, my god, there’ll be some real boredom and some sheer fucking embarrassment along the way.

Plus �a change, troops. Plus �a change…