The Answer Is Simple… (Gers … 1 Well … 1)

… buy all the Hearts players Romanov’s gonnae sack!

The brochures for the new “GersSave” scheme were under all our seats today - apparently we, the Rangers Supporters, can raise 5.6Million for the player budget: Get that together by Christmas - yer weans will understand if they’re beng denied an X-box for the sake of The Gers - and we’ll be able to land Gordon, Pressley, Hartley and Brellier in the January transfer window.

The Jambos couldn’t consolidate second place today. They only drew with managerless Dunfermline at Tynecastle this avvo and, as the Gorgie Oligarch said yesterday, this means his first team players - all 359 of them - will be on the buroo by Monday. We’ve now got the candy tae take our pick from this football fire sale. Nae bother! Juss like that! Bob’s Yer Chairman, Fanny’s yer fan’s representative - we can have ourselves a new team before our Hogmanay Hangover’s worn aff.

Or mibbeee not.

Or mibbee we’d prefer to see things through with Monsieur Le Guen - and keep a bit of self respect in the meantime. That’s how it seemed to me today. The ref took more boos than the players at the final whistle. There was sporadic outrage at the team and the manager, yes, but it was diluted by a tacit acceptance among the majority that things will take time.

Ye could hear Bears bitching at the top of their voices about Le Guee as we walked away from The Palace back to our buses, cars, underground trains and ponies of Shank. But you’ll always hear the loudmouths - that’s what they want, to be heard. What you have to do is take note when a general silence envelops them. There was resilience in it today. We know we’re in for a major overhaul on the playing front and I think most of us know days like this will eventually seem like a ridiculously small price to pay.

It was shite today, troops. Absolutely shite. And ye don’t need Doctor Watson’s coke-sniffing, opium ingesting, manic-depressive, unbelievably camp, autodidact, sleuth buddie here to tell ye that. But it’s been shiter!

If Billy Simpson and Johnny Hubbard had got their coats off and come on in the second half, instead of gracing the Ibrox pitch again for a mere two or three minutes at half-time only, then maybe it would have been different. The Pretoria penalty king and the Belfast-born goal ace were the best thing about today and their presence illuminated the long-term hope which one grimy, dank day temporarily hid from view (and they probably wondered why the hell Motherwell hadn’t changed their strip since they were playing against them!!).

Exactly half a century earlier, this pair were in the midst of racking up an incredible half century of domestic goals between them - 51 to be exact - in a title-winning season which contributed to the half century of championships - 51 to be exact - which adorn our badge, our trophy room, every updated stats book, the Louden Tavern wall and all our Red, White and Blue hearts.

Thomas Buffel had a realtively poor game today. He gets extra stick because he’s slight. But so was 5 foot 4 and 8st 10 Hubbard - and he had nerves of steel. We all know Johnny only missed three penalties out of the FIFTY SEVEN he took for Rangers in his ten-year career but he managed 10 goals from open play as well as the 11 he struck home from the spot in the 1955/57 season. Billy Simpson, a postcard of whom adorns the sun visor above the driver’s seat of my car, managed 30 in that same season - 21 in the league alone. He had levels of near-suicidal bravery to countermand his diminutive physique - a bit like Nacho Novo’s ludicrous tracking-back you could say.

Buffel ain’t no Hubbard and Novo aint no Simpson. Yet. Hey - they almost certainly never will be - maybe it’s already too late for them to achieve such status in the Rangers annals. But Novo did enough today to show he’s back to top form. He risks his lungs the way Simpson risked his skull and his trickery on the by-line won us a 35th minute corner which led to Buffel stciking a high ball to the back post. It was headed home by he who rose highest in the ensuing claret, amber, Bule, white and padded grey melee - Kris Boyd. Now there IS a man who’ll set the records we’re used to seeing set at Rangers thanks to the likes of Johnny Hubbard and Billy Simpson.

And Novo and Buffel need not give up on being remembered as Rangers greats by the fans rather than the record books because the welcome Hubbard and Simpson received today was warm and kind and sufficiently loud but far from rousing: So many Rangers fans don’t know the DETAIL of their club’s history but they nevertheless instinctively KNOW the standards set for us by the men of the Struth era and beyond. Nach doesn’t have to manage a goal every one-and-a-half games for nine years to be adored as Billy Simpson was. Buffel doesn’t have to go seven years without missing a penalty as well as making his trickery as potent as Hubbard’s for the Belgian to hear his name sung from the rafters. They just have to learn that hardness of character these two men posessed and that hardness is first and foremost about how they react to the Rangers crowd they play for.

At times Buffel is scared by Ibrox and Novo is too in love with it. Thomas shies away and Novo goes up to the Copland, like today, and demands more noise from the punters. If each man could just take his instinctive reaction a bit closer to the other’s then maybe (a) Thomas would have put away that chance in the last second of the game and (b) Nach wouldn’t have been subbed in the second half after such a brilliant first 45.

Johnny Hubbard would have been instinctively pulling his socks up and preparing to place the ball when he saw Sebo crash to the ground in the box. I’ll reserve judgement til I see it on the telly. It looked like an absolute stonewaller from where I was sat and, of course, I gave it as loud a roar as I could at the time but I’ve been proved wrong by TV pictures too many times to feel certain about any such moments -and the same goes for Hemdani’s challenege on Scott McDonald a wee bit later which could possibly have given the visitors the chance for all three points. At worst, both claims even themselves out. At best … at best NOTHING. Rangers should never be relying on such decisions to get us out a jail we’ve built for ourselves.

We scored a goal and played Motherwell off the pitch in the first half but the inability to break teams down further is testing the new Rangers and our defence is suspect enough for any single opposition counter-attack to be fatal. Motherwell’s goal today seemed to be their only shot of the second half, much as Inverness’ winner a fortnight previously.

We’re still knitting and gelling and getting things wrong in the course of that. If we score more than 1 goal we lose more than 1 goal. If we get 1 or less, the opposition gets 1. We’re making history in Europe one week, and an arse of ourselves at home the next. Such is the reality of a complete rebuild - but what happened in Livorno is also evidence that it can be done and it will be worth it.

Romanov’s not gonnae sack any of his players. He couldnae even sack the manager after losing at Tynecastle last week. It seems, perhaps, Romanov is finally learning that patience will get him further than mania gets him in the SPL. The Jambos have, in fact, gone from losing a home game to drawing a home game. Rangers have done the same. Maybe it’s time we saw that as an improvement and realised that our impatienece - perceived or otherwise - is often part of the problem. And the players should see it as part of the honour of playing for that Gersey.

Alex McLeish and Dick Advocaat brought us trebles in their first full seasons in charge. They were both all but hounded out the door by the fans. Le Gaffer will get it the other way round - early doors he’s being hounded as he all but loses the SPL title before November but by the time he leaves he’ll be feted and adored by a Rangers support desperate to have him stay on for three or four more trophy-laden seasons.

Someone will always have a better idea about who should be in charge but that’s why Rangers are so great: Coz our fans are the most ambitious on the planet. Some clubs want to wallow in victimhood, sentimentality and delusions of kindness - ours want to fight until there’s no-one left to beat.

Let’s keep punching!

PS - Seeing as I’ve been talking about Hearts and our greats of the fifties and staying the course - for those of you who don’t own The Complete Works of Robert McElroy, I should point out that, funnily enough, Billy Simpson scored his 100th Rangers goal against Hearts and that arguably the most important goal of his career came in a 1-0 win at Tynecastle which saw Rangers sufficiently dent Jambo confidence enough to claw back a seven-point deficit between ourselves and the Gorgie-ites to WIN THE LEAGUE!

PPS - seeing as some people take my every word so bloody seriously (mainly because it gives them a chance to come the cunt with someone lonely enough to pose no retaliatory threat) I will OH SO FORMALLY say the following: For private, personal, non-financial reasons I will not be participating in the GersSave scheme at the moment but I have nothing against it in principle and, once I get a wee matter resolved (no, it’s NOT a sex-change operation), who knows. In the meantime I will put extra money into Rangers in other ways. More European away trips hopefully and maybe shares through other methods (there’s a guy called Leeson giving me some really good investment advice right now. He’s quite optimistic about my portfolio). That’s what it’s all about - supporting The Rangers in any reasonable way we can. End of.

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Published:
10.28.06 / 8pm
Category:
News