Ya BASTARD ye!!! (VfB … 3 GERS .. 2)

FUCKER! Wanker! Bugger! Bastard, cunt, knob, shit, prick, twat, shite, arse, cunt, whore, dick, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCKKK!! Bollox. It was there in front of us, troops. Qualification was right there in front of us tonight, on that expanisve big pitch in Baden-Wurttemberg, and on that other pitch, slightly over to the west a bit, in Lyon. When it’s that close - it’s So FUCKING FRUSTRATING to lose it. No qualms, no quibbles - “deserve” isn’t a meaningful word on this blog and never has been. “derserve” should be banned from the football lexicon. What happens happens. The result tonight was, as per 99.999999999999999% of all results always, very fair and very square. But it doesn’t make it any less FUCKING ANNNOOOYING!!

Proud of The Gers, proud of my team - always am - but particularly so tonight. We made huge mistakes and lost stupid goals but we went for it and we gave it large and it’s only the fact those mn in that GORGEOUS Blue-White -Red&Black combo (how BEAUTIFUL does our stip look in a Swabian winter under floodlights!!) gave it their all that makes this SUCH A BLOODY INFUUUUUUUURIATING FUCKING night. Lose 3-0 and yer just straight depressed. Take the lead, go behind, draw level and lose the game - yer RAGING! Yer GUTTED. But, when it’s the champs of Germany yer trading blows with, yer going toe-to-toe with ye know ye’ve been in and given a game. I’ve seen us losing 3-0 in Zurich, 4-1 in Turin, 4-1 in Amsterdam - I’ll take infuriating over depressed any time.

So close. Sooooo close. But no Havanas being clipped in this neck of the woods this evening. FUCKING RAGING!! Fuck, we could SMELL it. At 2-2, with Darche and wee Stevie pouring forward, with VfB rocking at the back almost as badly as we did … fuck me if we couldn’t TASTE that last sixteen. It’s a familiar scent - its a refined bouquet. We Bears recognise it instantly. It reeks of Villarreal, it tastes like a long, cool Cerveca in a Valencia bar; it smells like fucking AMBROSIA (aye - WITH the tinned peaches on top!). It was under our chin, it was on our plate, it was sending its curling little wafts of aroma up intae oor nostrils - and we allowed it to be snatched away before we could get it doon wur throats. Doesn’t matter how close ye get - fact is we DIDN’T DO IT TONIGHT! And, at this level, in THIS competition, that shit tends to come back and haunt ye.

End of the day, Lyon’s failure to win at home to Barca was a saver. Against the French Champions at Ibrox a draw will do us but you’ll notice how I don’t employ an “only” or a “just”, far less a “merely” anywhere in that statement. Holding - and it will be HOLDING - Lyon to a draw on 12th December will be as major a result as holding Barca on the same pitch last month. Had we managed to turn the whacky races this evening to our advantage we’d've been looking at a two-goal loss being enough to see us through on Match Day 6. Even that would be no foregone conclusion with Juninho, Ben Arfur and co turning up in Govan. We won 3-0 over there - but they could just as easily win 3-0 over here. That in mind, having to beat Lyon when THEY only needed a draw doesnae bear thinking about. So, while we refuse to deal in the “ifs” and “buts” which put Rangers THROUGH this evening (for they are truly the stuff of fantasy), we can openly THANK FUCK Barca took two points off OL this evening (Coz that DID happen and it had nowt to do with us so there’s no kudos being wangled here): I would NOT want to have to WIN that game in a fortnight. I really wouldn’t have fancied our chances, despite the humping we gave Lyon in the Stade Gerland.

So, at 2-2 this evening, The Teds were ABSOLUTELY BANG-ON to go for it. Losing or drawing made no difference to our situation. Winning was the only thing which could have seriously changed our own picture in light of a Lyon set-back against Barca. Just as Archie Alzheimers MaCpherson was telling us how Stevie Naysmith wisnae cut-out for the Champions League, our ex-Killie boy promptly ran the length of the pitch, robbed a defender with the tackle of the century, sliced through what was left of VfB’s defence and allowed Bazza Ferguson to walk the ball into the net for 2-2. Thereafter we charge, charge, CHAAAARGED at the Germans’ goal and it was fucking exhilirating - for all of the fifteen minutes it took Stuttgart to regain the lead. It was a buzz though. And fifteen minutes of being almost in the last sixteen is about as much as we’re used to, on average, in a Champions League campaign.

Davie Weir was a bit slow for their third? Aye - maybe. Looks like the big man actually got a touch but - fuck it - the real cause of that goal was just our totally commendable and very advisable gung-ho tactics. When Lee came off it was the end of our shape, of our chance of holding a 1-0. Ironic maybe when it was his replacement who scored our opener but the end-to-end nature of proceedings was already in motion by that point and the ebb-and-flow pattern was secured when Lee kopped a dead leg in the process of nailing two opponents in two seconds (my kinda player!). VfB started flying just before we scored. Even when they cleared Davie Weir’s header off their own line they were thinking about nothing ther than getting right back intae our box. And they showed no signs of desisting wth the care-free, keine-to-lose attacks at any stage in the match. Hats off to them and hats off to us for responding in kind. We were trying for three points because one or zero points were of much the same use. Spot-on, Gers.

Can’t be quiet so phlegmatic about the other two we conceded. But there’ll be no witch-hunts either. Don’t anyone fucking DARE criticise any of this seasons’ squad. Their European form has been brilliant and they’ve all played their part in making it so damned exciting a tournament for us. Al Mcgregor is no Goram. We know that - those of us who saw Goram. But his record this season speaks for itself and it’s only one goal away to the Deutscher-Meister verein which has revealed his Europeam pedigree is less than Andy The Goalie’s. The real “disgrace” was perhaps in Pardo not being shut down before he got his shot in. After all, as Archie told us, the guy has over 400 caps for Mexico (Yes, You did hear right - Archie did say “over 400″) so he must be, by my rough estimations of the number of games played by the Mexcian national team, somewhere between 58 and 62 years old.

The real cat-kicker tonight though was the “wait and see” approach to defending Stuttgart’s 47th minute corner in the first half. Ifs, buts and maybes are banned on this blog too - only when we’re talking about permutations of points and goal-differences can we allow such discourse - but ye’d think the fact Stuttgart had a corner, and had been getting steadily, incrementally closer to scoring for the full twenty minutes since Charlie Adam opened the scoring, would have roused our defence to a state of vigilance - or even wakefulness - when that Brazilian wank was back-heeling the baw intae our net.

That was the real low point. Not hanging on to the lead at the break. Condceding it so stupildy and so painfully late may have sucked the life out any sense of moment which surrounded the squad. The half-time away dressing room should have been a place to draw breath and start truly feeling the win in our bones. As it was we let it become a place of depression and regret. We couldn’t afford that with Stuttgart coming at us the way they were. Not good enough - end of.

The great thing about watching the game on TV, with Rangers in another country, is I can shout and abuse the players with absolutely no fear of them hearing me. It’s a rare pleasure for me. I refuse to slate them when I’m breathing the same air as them. Simply CANNOT bring myself to criticise a Ger in any way, far less audibly, when I’m in the same stadium as them. So, when they’re on the telly and far-far away, I can GET RIPPED RIGHT IN and - BOY! - as someone who prefers anger to depression, did I not steam into those TV pictures with some furiously deranged invective. My main point, as Andy Walker was making an arse of handing over to the commercials, was “YE’VE BEEN FUCKING DYING TAE LOSE THAT GOAL FOR THE LAST HALF HOUR!! YE’VE BEEN FUCKING TRYING TO CONCEDE AN EQUALISER EVER SINCE WE SCORED. YESE WERE DESPERATE TAE GO IN LEVEL AT THE BREAK - YESE COULDNAE WAIT TO GET THEM BACK INTAE THE GAME …”

And so on. Astonishing stuff. Real slanderous bile. Hateful even. And this was against people I LOVE! But - it was mostly just stupid. And everyone knows that when ye do that kinda thing, it’s the cruelty of dashed hopes which yer hating, not yer club or country. Think this is what happens when ye DO let yerself fall into the slate-yer-own trap after thirty years of refusing to do it audibly at the games - ye really go OTT.

Maybe this is WHY I never let myself go off on one when AT THE GAME. There’s “being a bit harsh” or “being a bit over-emotional” and there’s BEING A COMPLETE FUCKING FANTASIST LOONEY. When the passion gets me, it really does get me - and it’s always in Europe I feel it worst. Coz it’s Europe I care about most.

The fantasist looney hollaring takes more pleasant forms too: When Lee McCulloch went off, we won a corner almost straight away. I realised it was just about the same time we won that corner in Lyon from which Big Lee scored our opener in France. As DaMarcus went to take it, I thought to myself - THOUGHT mind! - it would be just like the thing if Lee’s replacement in this game actually managed to … “GOOOOOOAAAALLLL!!!! GET FUCKING IN THERE, CHARLIE! So I then danced around the room, shaking the foundations of the entire street, yelling “I telled ye - I fucking telled ye!”. I “told” you so. Yes. Erm …

Quite WHO I’d actually “told” was beyond both me and the zero other people in the room at the time with psychic powers. All anyone remembered me SAYING OUT LOUD and PUTTING IN WRITING was that I was sure we’d lose tonight - and that I didn’t think we’d score another goal or gain another point in the Champions League after our win in Lyon.

And there’s the point. After our away win in Lyon, I honestly couldn’t see us winning another point or scoring another goal. I have a horrible streak of objectivity in me, It’s partly borne of reading so much football trivia and watching so many tournaments on telly. What ye might even call “experience”. Anyway, ye start seeing patterns. But, more than that, having a streak of objectivity is the one thing which, when ye take away all the preposterous religious and political posing, really marks us apart from Celtic fans. So I cherish it and I cultivate it - and, thank fuck, objectivity lets me get things totally wrong too: Coz the only thing ye can predict in football IS, you’ll be surprised to know, its unpredictability. Rangers duly got one more Champions League point in 2007/2008, in our next game. And, rather than just one, we got TWO more goals - tonight. I still fear they may be our last of each but the objectivity thing also means you can regard final outcomes from more than one angle. If we don’t go through against Lyon we’ll be rightly gutted.- but we’ve played three away games in the Champions League and scored five goals and conceded five goals. That’s a fair old fight. Against the mighty Barcelona, we’ve fared better, in respectability terms, than Lyon did. We’ve already won two games and drawn another. When we look at where we were at the beginning of this season, and in January this year, we’ve already won our own little Champions League.

But we’d much prefer the big one.

Hey - ambition doesnae contain one iota of object-fucking-tivity, and neither does our LOVE FOR THE TEDDY BEARS.

Hard night? Aye - maybe if yer a Morton or Queens Park fan. This is the big time, and we’re shaking it right up. May this beautiful roller-coaster journey never end.

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Published:
11.27.07 / 11pm
Category:
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