definitel-AYE READY! (NOVO & SEBO … 2 Drogba and Sheva … 0)

Ooo Aaar ya?! Oo are ya?! Oo are ya?!

You cum up ere, gettin a bit leery on awr mannah, givin it aaaaawl thaaaaaaht? Eh? You cum dahn the Raynjurs, taykin liburtees, finkin you can just mugg us off then scarrrpah?? STROLL ON, me old China - you nonce, you ponce, you git, you Slaaaaaaaag. Leave it out guvnor, jellied eels, apples ‘n pears, my old man’s a dustbin and don’t mind if I do, darlin’! You lot might be among the favourites for the fukin Champions League but this ere’s The Rangers, mate - these is the wowld faaaaaymous Teddy Beeeeeaaaars … and we ain’t ‘avin NONE OF IT!!! You ‘eer me - NONE OF IT!!

Oh my goodness. Oh my golly gosh. No matter which way anyone tries to look at it - this game was absolutely effing OUTSTANDING!!!

Chelsea might be currently joint favs to win the Champions League and the most moneyed team in Britain, if not Europe, and this might mean they can afford to take it easy in pre-season friendlies or have trouble raising their game for such but - fuck it - it was just a trip up the road for them and they were received like royalty - they was on their best friendly form and WE HUMPED THEM!

We changed four of our five defenders at half-time - we had just three players who completed the entire 90 minutes - our changes were more wholesale than Chelsea’s and if our players were going for it more than our esteemed guests then Walter certainly wasn’t trying to do anything other than field as many of his squad as he could. When we brought on Kirk Broadfoot and Ian Murray they were bringing on Claudio Pizzaro and Shaun Wright-Philips. At the same time Filip Sebo was having his boots checked by the fourth official, Jose was giving his instructions to Ashley bloody Cole!!

Yup, every time I try to look at mitigating factors I see absolutely no advantage to us: Chelsea weren’t playing their first pre-season friendly here - in fact they have the Community shield final against Manchester United just next weekend. Every one of the players they had on show yesterday must earn more than Barry Ferguson so any unproven gulf in motivation is itself mitigated by the fact Jose Mourinho has the most monied squad in the world at his disposal. Basically, we met one of the top four teams on the planet this weekend - AND WE KICKED THEIR FUCKING ASS!!!

… and with our reserves too.

This was a pre-season friendly which will live longer in the memory than half of our bloody Champions League matches. This was one of those magical games-from-nowhere sort of days which you’ll mention to the grandkids and they’ll NEED to be given the rest of the story because it won’t be in most of the record books. Like the crowd which went to the old Abbotsinch airport in the sixties to greet Rangers off their return flight from a glorious tour of Russia, like the Friday night Super Ally Scored a hat-trick to beat Celtic in front of a packed Ibrox in the Glasgow Cup Final, like Cantona’s dismissal and May’s own-goal as the mighty Man U came a cropper at The Brox in the nineties … this was a day for Rangers folklore rather than footballing history.

And it was one of those days when ye didn’t realise how much ye wanted it til you were through the gates and saw the faux nature of much of the love-in between us and Chelsea’s superstars, til you saw the number of tourist fans who were sitting in the Rangers crowd wearing their Chelsea tops and so OBVIOUSLY attending the first live game of their lives. These folk weren’t at that Chelsea game at Anfield in the eighties when the Bears who turned up at an English First Division match coz Rangers were out the Scottish Cup ended up being shoved into the Anfield Road away section rather than the Kop. So many of the pro-Chelsea “Bears” yesterday had no idea what went on at Anfield over twenty years ago - they just knew there was some sort of connection and, just like the thousands of Scottish Barcelona fans who turned up at Murrayfield yesterday, they were at Ibrox to see one of the clubs mentioned most often on Sky Sports News.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Chelsea as well as I like/dislike any other English club. I also have absolutely no problem with Rangers fans being respectful of esteemed opposition -and I must point out that Frank Lampard and John Terry are ABSOLUTE GENTLEMEN and a CREDIT TO THEIR CLUB AND COUNTRY for the way they conducted themselves yesterday - it was a hard game and an increasingly wild atmosphere and they were well beaten by the end of it but they were the last men off the pitch and they applauded all four sides of Ibrox with a genuine appreciation which, well, we genuinely apprecited. BUT …

… but I just wish that we could take a little of the adoration we were displaying for Lampard and save it for the next time we have a Bert Konterman or an Amoruso-type situation: The days when some of our fans BOO THEIR OWN PLAYERS could be eradicated if we just scooped a little of the froth off the top of yesteday’s love-in and re-applied it to the areas of our fan-ship which need it more: And while Chelsea have always been a proud, characterful club, I think some of the treatment doled out to the likes of Juventus and Bayern Munich at Ibrox during Champions League nights could be tempered with some of the surfeit of respect we afforded yesterday’s opposition. Champions League nights, real competition - yes, that requires more partisan backing from the Ibrox crowd but we should make it all about our support of OUR team rather than any lambasting of clubs much more worthy of the compliments Chelsea received from the Govan faithful this weekend. Mind you, the moment one of those Juve or Bayern players hits the deck trying to get one of our players sent off - fuck it - GIVE THEM HELL, the cheating bastards!!!

Against Ajax last Tuesday there was a lovely ripple of applause from the home fans when the Dutch scored a lovely goal. We then exchanged applause with their players at the end - this kind of stuff goes on all the time and is unreported by the papers when we’re next up on charges of “genocide via singing the sash”. Like the night we qualified for the Champions League knock-out stages after the draw with Inter and we all swapped scarves, badges and best wishes with the travelling Inter tifosi - that was so cool. It was a veritable love-in with a bunch of fellow football fans - no-one at Ibrox gave a shit about the fact they would obviously all be Catholic - but this is never borne in mind when we’re being slammed as knuckle-dragging bigots. Nevertheless this is the level of sporting behaviour I LOVE in The Rangers support - because, as such behaviour should be, it’s just NATURAL. It’s a given of decent behaviour. it’s almost “more natural” and worthy because, unlike our seperated brethren from across the city, we don’t nail it to our mast as a charcteristic singular to our support. That would just be insulting. And so yesterday I found it slightly insulting to see folk out their seat wetting themselves over Frank Lampard’s presence (as one Chelsea fan told me afterwards, at least it proves Rangers fans have dropped their England allegiance - England fans BOO Lampard!), using genuine affection between both clubs as an excuse to laud the “Glamour of the Premiership” when I have also seen Rangers slaughtered by their own fans because we were humped by, for example, Red Star Belgrade - if yer gonnae respect the opposition ye know so well, then make sure ye know about EVERY opponent worthy of your respect.

Still, these folk who came to their first game yesterday - and maybe even some of the Chelsea players thinking about where they could play out their retirement years, maye have come to Ibrox yesterday thinking all about the Stanford Bridgers but they left knowing all about Rangers. The corner in which Frank Lampard took his standing ovations for his frst set-piece, later became the corner where Filip Sebo was received like a god. All the people taking photos of each other all across the Govan Stand yesterday might be back to Ibrox more often than they’re off to the West End of London. If any football bug was gonnae bite by the end of this particular, Rangers would be laying the Adidas Teamgeist-like eggs under the skin. We’ve won as many European trophies as Chelsea, ye know - and after the way this game went and the way our crowd came back to us you’d be unsurprised to know we’ve also got just as far as Chelsea ever have in the Champions League

And it’s because of the loomingnessness of the Champions League that yesterday’s events were all so symbolic. If we get into the Group Stages and draw Chelsea, the atmos will be a lot different. It’ll still be plenty respectful I’d imagine but Didier Drogba will not be staying on his feet the way he did yesterday and our fans will be getting a lot more p*ssed off with the Stamford Bridgers than we did this time round. The respect, for me, comes in when a real game is over and the two sets of fans meet on the streets - THEN is the time to show mutual appreciation and understanding, NO MATTER the opposition. If we get Chelsea in the Champions League, you’d expect a different outcome to that which happened yesterday but, my god, what happened yesterday may just have changed exactly what might happen if we do meet Chelsea in the Champions League …

Let’s be in no doubt, Chelsea had their chances and we made our desperate clearances but, all-in-all, we just got better and better and better. 0-0 at half-time was a result but we then took off our entire defence except for the increasingly brilliant Cuellar and we even shoved on the most high-profile donkey in Scottish football, up front, and he missed a sitter and then scored an absolute screamer of a winner.

In ten months time, Chelsea may well be Champions of Europe. And we’ll all know that Filip Sebo made it Rangers 2 Chelsea 0.

Wee Nacho was outstanding and his opener came in the 85th minute, summing up the slow, turning of the screw which I love to see Rangers impose on the likes of Falkirk and Aberdeen - that we purposefully ground down and then applied a clinical, late Coup de Grace to ROMAN ABRAMOVICH’S CHELSEA says so much about the current potential of this Rangers team … no, strike that - this Rangers SQUAD.

Andrii Shevchenko and Didier Drogba started for Chelsea yesterday. Shevchenko is one of the greatest strikers the world’s ever seen, former European footballer of the year and a current signing target of the current European Champions, Milan - who can’t afford him. Davie Weir had him in his back pocket for the first 45 minutes - neither player re-emerged for the second half. Drogba was more noticeable than his partner in crime and played for longer, but Carlos Cuellar reduced the African Player of the Year to little more than a bystander. Barry Ferguson outshone Frank Lampard for the entire match and obviously relished the challenge and his prompting and energy and stamina soon had the Chelsea-loving element of the Rangers support remembering thr thing that a few of us knew as soon as we walked into the ground yesterday - “Fuck this “Blues Borthers” keich - I want to beat this mob and give everyone in England a reminder of just what we’re all about”.

This result won’t really mean anything to anyone other than Rangers. I mean, if getting into the English league set-up was predicated on defeating English sides then Dunfermline Athletic would have been in the Premiership long before us or Sellik (Check yer Wee Rid Book’s European records section). If we aint gonnae be fooled by Celtic’s losing 4-1 at Newcastle then no-one in Scotland’s gonnae be overly worried by what we did to Abramovich’s play-thing. BUT this result should mean a hell of a lot to us - to the Rangers support and the Rangers players:

Basically, there’s no more excuses for anything other than trying to win every trophy, always. More pointedly, there’s little point in doing what we did to Chelsea on Saturday if we can’t do anything other than knock sevens shades of minnow shite out of FK Zeta on Tuesday. Now we know, if we didn’t before (and I didn’t), that Rangers SHOULD make the Champions League Group stages.

Wee Nach’s goal was a fitting enough climax to a beautifully steady realisation that we had the beating of Chelsea. When Sebo finished the job off three minutes later, the orgasms were multiple. He got the shirt off and went into the crowd below me and I nearly ended up jumping over the Bar 72 mob and into the front of the Govan from the Rear of the same stand. He may have slimmed down and let the hair grow back but Filip can still take even my weight. He’s casried the weight of his transfer fee and failure to impress for almost a year now - and he’s rode it out.

I suspected Walter and Ally were playing Filip purely in the hope he’d fluke a few goals and maybe fetch a decent price before the window closes. But, even if they were, yesterday’s cameo, in which the burly Slovak we all love to patronise managed to lift the crowd by his very presence and then overcome the dissapointment of missing one easy chance for history to go on and secure that legendary win in even more spectacular style, has probably made the management team think this guy can actually augment our ever-improving squad quality.

Fucking BNP were on Mafeking Street yeesterday - no one bught anything but no-one attacked the bastards either (verbally, of course). They probably thought that Rangers-Chelsea was a shoe-in for a bit of nazi sympathy. Don’t quite know how that works when we’re both clubs proud of our Britishness and a cornerstone of that Britishness is the defeat of the Nazi forces during the Second World War. But there ye are - if we continue to let these scumbags think they can sell their stuff at The Brox without fear of “censure” then they will do so. But then I got into the ground and some fellahs up the back tried to give it a drunken burst of “Hullo! Hullo!” and some slightly less drunk fellahs further front gave it a burst of “Shut it! Will ye never fucking learn!”. I have my issues with the sudden dropping of Hullo-Hullo but, in terms of looking after our image and managing our European eligibility, there’s a real sea-change - the loudmouths are slowly becoming the anti-sectarian ones. That’s good.

And in terms of Rangers actually doing something in Europe, well, I have to say that there’s even more hope after the show which took place on the pitch yesterday. Pre-season friendlies come and go and usually turn out to be a chore for spectators and players alike but this one will live long in the memory - as long as it lives long enough to inspire us to crush Zeta on Tuesday and whoever we’ll get IF we make the next round, then it’ll be more than just a flash-in-the folklore pan.

Blue IS the colour, alright - but WE are The People.