Champions League-Relegation double still on (Arabs … 2 GERS …1)

Celtic didn’t just “win the European Cup” - aw naw. They had to go and put an extra “magical” spin on it, didn’t they. Of course they did, the blessed, little underdog, sainted, victim rebels that they are. They were the first British team to win it … the first northern European team to win it … the first non-Latin team to win it …

Remarkable stuff indeed - but all those parameters of achievement were actually emphasising everything fatuous about Celtic’s proclaimed “identity”: In short, these sons of the vatican were suddenly waving the Union Jack for the barbarians - they were waving northern menace in the sun-tanned faces of the deeply Catholic south of the continent! Jock Stein’s Celtic were the footballing equivelant of the Gauls, the Visigoths, the Vandals - Celtic were just like THE HUNS!

As far as continetal soccer’s old order was concerned, these pastey-faced gingers with nae teeth wearing grass-coloured rugby strips were waving a Union Jack while SACKING ROME! I don’t think the Celtic faithful appreciated this notion. So thank god for them that their greatest ever team had one other remarkable first up their sleeve in Lisbon in 1967:

Celtic were the first team to win the European cup with players entirely from their own country … in this case, practically from their own city. Nothing British, or ethincity-specific about that litle achievement. That’s one extra spin on their European Cup win that nobody can take away from them, that nobody as small-minded as me can twist to use against them.

So we, being us, being Rangers have to out-do that. We cannae “just” win the European Cup - that’s noh enough. I mean, at a push I’d probably accept the sight of Rangers merely winning the European Cup this season - if I really had to, like. But ye know what it’s like - no sooner would Barry get his mits on that famous big-eared vase than we’d be deluged with posts on our websites and banners at Old Firm games, telling us They, The Other Lot, had “won it first” and “with homegrown talent too”.

So I’d like us to win the European Cup with an equally singular by-product feat: Perhaps the fact that it’s the Champions League now and we’ll have to play ten times as many games as Celtic did in 67 might be enough to wind up Sellik fans. But that’s not really to difficult to do - we can wind them up just by existing - and it’s hardly the point anyway. Nah - I want Rangers to win the European Cup with a twist which all Europe’s anoraks can appreciate, in just the same way I appreciate Celtic’s “35-mile radius” achievement of 1967: And Walter Smith knows this too. And Walter’s on the case:

Ye see, Celtic did something no other team in Europe had done before. And, just to make sure there’s something singular about OUR European Cup triumph, it looks like Walter’s planning to make Rangers the first side to become champions of Europe … WHILE BEING RELEGATED!

Oh yes! You heard it here first, troops. I’m tellin ye - it’s happening right before our very eyes.

Moscow, 21st May 2008: Michel Platini stands on the podium in the centre of Luzhniki Stadium pitch, handing out runners-up medals to Chelsea of the Barclays Premier League and winners medals to the players of Rangers FC, now of the IRN BRU FIRST DIVISION!!

And Clive Tyldsley says “A mere three days after securing the Scottish Cup with a 7-0 Hampden win over Celtic and a mere two weeks after finally being consigned to lower-league football for the first time in their history with an 8-0 loss at home to Gretna, Rangers also become Champions of Europe for the first time in their history … with Alan Gow becoming the first man to score FIVE in a European Cup final. It’s a season of firsts for the Glasgow club; each massive win in UEFA competition, preceded and/or followed by a disastrous domestic result. Only when playing against other Champions League teams could they perform to their devestating best …”

Okay. Sorry. Not a time to be joking, I know but - really - what else can we do after today? We, most of us, kinda KNEW this result was on the cards. We were pretty sure what was gonnae go down on Tannadice Street: Before the Stuttgart game, Hearts humped us: Before the Lyon game we dropped two points at Motherwell: After the Lyon game, Hibs done us up like kippers.

And as if this routine of SPL-ECL inadequacy in 2007/2008 wisnae enough, Dundee United have had our measure for most of the last four years. Add to this the fact that the Terrors of Tayside haven’t lost a goal at home all season and the portents were as ominous as for Michael Jackson’s chances of a job with Mothercare. It just wiznae gonnae happen. There’s no excuses in these facts - we were defeated very fair and very square today - but there’s a clear combination of circumstances which we acknowledged even on this very blog, on Thursday night. Most observant Bears expected a set-back today. Doesn’t make it excusable, doesn’t make it ignorable. But I think it gives it context. All I want to do here is address how we, as Bluenoses, feel about the way the club is going.

Despite these domestic fuck-ups, there can only be one logical assessment. This Sunday evening I’m pissed off, but this last four months I’m fucking ecstatic.

As I said after the Hibs defeat at Ibrox - which came in the wake of the mother of all away results, in Lyon - we’re not settling for this early-season domestic routine but we can’t fail to understand it: So much so soon has to be paid for. A ten-month old team which is suddenly coruscating through the Champions League - fucking up Barcelona, the champions of France and the Champions of Germany - is setting a marker of what it CAN achieve. But at such a young age it’s almost physically impossible for this burgeoning Rangers team to follow through on all its promises.

Maybe next season we can beat everyone in Europe AND Scotland. Coz that’s what we should be aiming for - that’s what we’re proving we should be doing. Or maybe we’ll only have to wait til after Christmas to get it right on all fronts. Or til after the Nou Camp. The rate of improvement under Waldo is frightening. We were punted out the Scottish Cup by

Dunfermline in January - they had hardly managed a goal in the SPL all season but the Pars put three, going on six past us that day: Now they’re in the First Divsion - they lost 5-0 to Hamilton last week and 3-0 to Stirling fucking Albion yesterday - and we’re KEEPING BARCELONA AT BAY! It’s not just basic manners or inate gratitude which has me saying all these SPL slip-ups are forgiven in the light of such European excess. It’s also the fact that all evidence points to Walter making us even better, more consistently winning, by next month, ie, Thursday! And, I really wouldn’t mind being punted out the CIS cup at Motherwell on Wednesday if it guaranteed we would lose by less than four, five or six goals in Catalunya seven days later.

We used to think such “deals” were the stuff of bar-room and school-yard banter; “would ye rather lose all four Old Firm games and win the league or vise-versa??! Eh!”. All that kinda patter was seemingly just to test how bitter ye were - coz no-one ever loses all the Old Firm games and wins the league anyway. The “One or other” scenario was rather fantastical. But if this season has shown us anything so far it’s that the Europe-v-Scotand debate is very real for Rangers fans. The domestic form is now offically in the inconsistent department. Yet the European form is mesmerising - grandiose, historic. And the timing of the domestic slip-ups - in the games either side of European Cup nights - proves that one is causing the other.

(Oh and, by the way, Celtic haven’t won at Ibrox in any of their last three visits and Rangers have won the last three Old Firm games and were superior in last season’s head-to-head with Celtic - yet we haven’t won the SPL for two seasons: Maybe there’s more to these bar-room and schoolyard debates than we reckoned!! )

So, we have a choice to make at the moment. What would you prefer? And I, for one, have become so gut-full of domestic trophies AND European let-downs over the last thrity years, the years for which I’ve been loving this club of ours, that there is NO QUESTION of which pattern I’ll choose.

Would ye rather we’d lost 2-1 to Celtic last week and beat Dundee United 3-0? Would ye rather we’d drawn 0-0 with Celtic, beat Dundee united 2-1 and lost 3-0 to Barcelona? Coz theyd have been more COMMON SENSE scenarios, a more EXPECTED sequence of results. But today, it seems obvious to me anyway, we paid the price of the extra effort required to pull off two of the best performances Rangers have given us in years, and for the fact they gave us those performances in the space of three days.

It ain’t necessarily so - we SHOULD be beating Dundee United - but, frankly, the Arabs were good today. As Walter did, ye have to doff yer bunnett to them. They have been good at Tannadice for all of this season and Craig Levein could well be the man to succeed Walter Smith in the manager’s chair at Ibrox (Christ, they were sitting side by side today in the director’s box) so it’s only the brilliance of our last two results which gives today’s the possible aura of “disgrace”.

It was a bad day at the office. It is a set-back. But it’s more than manageable and it certainly ain’t no disgrace.

No-one thinks Dundee United, Hibs, Motherwell and Hearts are better than Barcelona. But they’ve all given us a wee taste of what we gave Barca and Lyon in the Champions League. The big boys don’t like it up ‘em, especially when they ain’t fully focussed on the game. Today we was the big boys and, for a team still forming, still gelling, I ain’t gonnae get too irate when the concentration and intensity levels drop in the same week as we’ve destroyed Celtic and kept the Catalan behemoth at bay.

We ain’t as far ahead of Dundee United as Barca are ahead of us, in terms of personnell, so Dundee United didn’t frustrate us into a draw today - they had plenty left in the tank to get upfield and take all three points off us. United were nowhere near as backs-to-the-wall as we were on Tuesday but they knew our key players and key areas and they smothered and frustrated them in much the same way we were all over Ronadinho, Messi and co.

Fair play to United. They were quality today.

Wee Nacho taking a bit of an eppy at the end - effectively wasting the two minutes of injury time we should have been using to salvage a valuable SPL point - was the final evidence that this Rangers display SHOULD be criticised in itself. If ye can go about square-going the opposition manager and rabidly hauling grounded opponents off the grass they’ve just been booted into by your team-mate then ye obviously have more energy left to be giving to the Rangers cause. It was displaced, it was wasted, Nacho. But you’ve been a hero to us, mate, and you’re forgiven everything: Like Cuellar’s carelessness in the box, Ferguson and Hutton’s continual bitching at rather than bossing of the ref, and big Lee’s relatively poor game, all you’ve done is sum up the fact we’re still a work in progress: The physical energy is still there - there was plenty effort put in this afternoon - but it’s clealy the psychological edges which are being blunted by our Big Game successes: No excuse - just a diagnosis of what’s needed next in Walter’s miraculous arc of improvement this last ten months:

We’re not drained by defeats - at this moment in time we’re drained by success: Not in the legs but in the heads. That has to be worked on. But I understand and, with the highs of this season still smashing the lows to a pulp, I INSTANTLY forgive.

(PLUS - after the Georgia-Scotland game, any opponent suddenly fielding a teenage, rookie goalkeeper is a sure sign that we’d be as well not turning up!!)

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Published:
10.28.07 / 7pm
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