Orgasmically uneventful rollercoaster of BLISS!!(Crvena Zvezda … 0 GERS … 0 [0-1 on AGG])

FOUR minutes???!!! WHERE THE HELL DID HE GET FOUR FUCKING MINUTES FROM????!!! Little Portugese bas…

Someone zap me with the defibrillator when it’s all over … coz I refuse tae believe it is over.

There’s only so much the brain and the heart can take. Sometimes ye get so tense ye just have to chek-out into meltdown mode … or ye just lock yerself so tightly into the concentration seat ye find ye cannae get back out when ye’ve finally reached yer destination.

And we’ve reached it. We’ve reached the hallowed, promised, cash-laden land they call The Champions League. It’s a bountiful country, full of lions and sharks admittedly but with more than enough creature comforts to make the dangerous outings supremely worth it. And then they have that smashing national anthem too -

“We are the Champions … Wir sind die Besten … nous sommes les meilleurs …. THAA CHAAAAAAAMPEEEOOOONNSS!!”

GET.

FUCKING.

IN.

THERE.

YOU.

BEAUTIFUL.

TEDDY.

BEARS.

GERRINTHERE!!

GERRINTHERE, you bloody GORGEOUS men in Red, White and ROYAL LIGHT BLUE. YEEEEAAAAAAGGGGHHHHSSSS!!!

OH, what a night - oh, what a result - oh, WHAT A BLOODY PERFORMANCE!!

I’m bricking it at 7pm tonight. Let’s make no mistake - when the game starts, I am offically BRICKING it. Just a few hours later, it’s difficult to imagine why - that’s how good this Rangers performance was. To go to the Marakana and render the game boring to the neutral is MAJOR.

Oh, youse were BRILLIANT tonight, Gers - brilliant.

We were all nervous enough prior to this one. We’d spent an eon listening to the projected financial ramifications of tonight’s result - we were all tapped into the accountancy vibe and the possibility that, by Thursday morning, Celtic could be in a different financial league from us. Sir Dave would have bailed us out, no doubt, but the finacial thing was a huge worry.

But, more than that - SO MUCH more than that - it’s just the sheer fucking PRESTIGE of the whole thing, isn’t it.Ye can have all the Euros, Sterling, Kronas, Hungarian Forint and Maletese Lira ye want but, at the end of the ball-shaped day, it’s the glory, lustre and rep of the European Cup/UEFA Champions League which means ye JUST WANT TO BE THERE. As the Setanta commentator said tonight, there’s only four clubs have played more seasons in Europe than The Teds - we’re fitbaw FANS, not financial analysts, so we’re all about the history and the pride - but even Barcelona, Real Madrid, Sporting Lisbon and Anderlecht would have been feeling the heat n Belgrade tonight.

Never mind even the lustre of the Champions League Grup stages - there was the undeniable Herculean challenge of going to Red Star Belgrade’s home patch with a 1-0 first leg lead. Last time we were here we were destroyed. Different players on both sides but the same two clubs - one’s won the European Cup, ours hasn’t. We have the bigger budget but we also need that trophy more than Red Star. They’ve had their turn - it was just a matter of proving that to them, just a matter of proving to them that 1990/91 was very firmly IN THE PAST.

Nervous as all these factors made us. Nervous as we were made by the realisation the this was the hardest test yet for Walter Smith’s second stint at The Brox, the sight and once-removed sound of the din of 50,000 patriotic Serbs greeting our team onto their pitch was enough to make you wonder if even Barcelona could get a result on this ground.

By the time Big Cuellar made the first complete hash of a high ball in his Rangers career I totally understood why. Part of ye even wondered if it’d be better for the Bluenoses who’d made the joruney to Belgrade, if we were pumped on the pitch tonight.

The players in all-blue also seemed to feel the fear for the first fve or ten minutes. Candy-striped shirts were whizzing into our box and failing to get shots on target only by the merest of margins. The Serbs were charging all round us but …

…but gradually you realised they weren’t charging THROUGH us. Davie Weir held firm. Big Carlos regained his inate composure. Then ..

Then the reincarnation of Jimmy Millar himself, Lee McCulloch, went up fro a high ball with Red Star’s chunky captain. This guy missed the first leg at ibrox - he was a dead ringer for Pavel Nedved with the Noddy Holder hair and the wide, bandy build. Big Lee put his elbow through the guy’s cheekbone. And Big Lee did it in such a way that the ref had as much clue as what happened as the Red Star captan had about what planet he was on and what year it was.

Alan Hutton eventually began back-pocketing his direct opponent - the little wind-up merchant from the first leg. Hemdani, Bazza and Thomson all looked too cool at times - some of their team-mates weren’t ready for their confident, intricate passing but - eventually - everyone started singing from the same sharp Protestant Work Ethic hymn sheet.

And then there were the two men at the two extermes:

Allan McGregor. Fucking hell. Even the most wizened, medal-laden old net-minder on the world stage would have though twice about continually trapping the ball with his feet in this atmosphere, for these stakes. But Al was not only ticking away every tock with his reluctance to pick up the ball until the very last moment, but he even began chesting it down to himself rather than catching it. By the end of the game they were charging into him with their shoudlers and elbows but Al trains with Lee McCulloch every day - this was a piece of piss. One brilliant reflex save with quarter of an hour to go showed that the slowing down of the game was not slowing down his readiness - Al was constantly alert.

And, at the other end, Jean-Claude Darcheville. The Darche.

Pin a hero’s medal on his battering-ram chest. He was immense. Absolutely immense.

Like a bull in a china shop, with a credit card, he caused perpetual chaos amongst those taller but lankier Red Star defenders yet he always had a purpose - always the threat of a goal lay at the end of his hustling and bustling. If he turned those guys once he turned them a hundred times - drawing fouls and winning corners and generally reminding Red Star that they had more problems than just finding a way to score at OUR end!

If Darche had netted that chance around the hour mark which actually flew just past the post, it would have been a fitting tribute to a brilliant solo-striker performance. He ran himself into the ground and we had to bring on Danny Cousin AND DaMarcus Beasley before we could adequately replicate Jean-Claude’s effort and effect.

Round about that hour mark we looked seriously comfortable. Round about the 70-minute mark we were under the greatest amount of pressure. Round about the NOTHING mark did Red Star look like scoring, far less eliminating us.

When Sasa Papac decided not to punt the ball out for a throw but, instead, lob it over two guys in his own box and dribble it round a third before punting it up the park, I certainly knew the Rangers TEAM were feeling confident about the result. But it’s only now, in looking back at it, that I can also relate to just how SPOT-ON we got the tactics and the tempo and the whole bloody night.

Walter Smith, TAKE A BOW, Sir. I doubted we’d get this far - I really did - but, as much as I want to progress from the Group Stage and WIN the bloody European Cup, there’s no doubt this was the one result which REALLY saves our season. And maybe a few more seasons after this. As Alex McLeish found out, even doing well in the Champions League is not enough for the knee-jerk element of our support - they want the treble too and that’d be a fair enough request if this wasnt Walter’s first full season back at the helm. But he must get credit - HUGE credit - NOW, at this moment, for this victory. His tactics in the fist leg are now also retrospectively vindicated. The man’s already done better than even a Waldo-worshipper like me had expected - I think he may indeed have added a dimension to his European management since he was away.

Red Star are a poor team but, as Artmedia Bratislava demonstrated a few seasons back, you underestimate any side in this competition at your peril. And, as Celtic continue to prove year in, year out, any club which has actually won the European Cup - as Red Star did seventeen years ago - will always be capable of wringing a little bit extra out of their players on a given glory-glory night. This tie was fraught with danger on the field - and financial ctastrophe off it - Walter Smith led us through this minefield with the kind of graceful, Continental-savvy confidence which I thought we could only get from Paul Le Guen.

It’s a long, hard season ahead but - BY GORAM! - it would have been a lot longer, if easier, if we hadn’t qualified for the Champions League … for the EIGHTH time in our history, by the way. Walter Smith has got us there FOUR of those times. Hats off to the Divine Cardigan inded.

I know we all want to talk about which teams we might get drawn with, what pot we’ll be in on Thursday, will this hurt our chances of winning the SPL - etc, etc. And we also want to confirm Steven Naismith will be joining us now - and perhaps a few more new faces. But, irrespective of what happens in Europe later this season, irrepsective of whether or not we continue to survive in Europe beyond Christmas, this result agaisnt Red Star in itself deserves to be lauded - especially for the way it was achieved:

All bow to a marvellous, ballsy, sussed, smooth, totally competent and supremely skilful Rangers performance.

Won by one goal, scored dead on the half-way point of the tie. That’s class - that’s European class. And now we once again join the classiest teams in Europe.

BRING IT ON!!

Well done, Gers - so extra fucking proud of yese tonight.