Proximitous, however there exists a terminally limited number of Havanas (Sheep … 1 GERS … 1)

Put it this way: During the build up to any of the three or four Kris Boyd attempts on goal in the dying minutes, I said to myself and/or the Bear beside me “if this goes in we’ve won the league”. That’s the best way I can sum up today. The fact that none of those chances went in doesn’t mean we’ve lost the league - not by a long shit shot - but I’d be a hell of a lot more convinced about our title challenge if we had done the biz today, in the particular circumstances which evolved as this quagmire fixture played out.

So, as it transpires, I feel we dropped more than two points. I feel we missed a chance to make a real renaissance noise, to set down an unavoidable marker. We played most of the game with ten men and yet we always looked like the team with the extra man. This is an encouraging angle to be gleaned from our latest rammy at the sheep dome. Steven Naismith is every inch the legendary Ranger in the making after his astouding display of guile, stamina and bravery today - that’s another plus point. But I’d rather have two more SPL poinst than these two by-the-way points.

Beating Abeerdeen at Pittodirie is always enjoyable but it’s never as difficult as they’d like it to be. A straightforward slaughtering of the Red Menace would have been professional and pointedly so, given the two results Celtic have not enjoyed since we last kicked a ball. However, to beat Aberdeen with a man less on the field for an hour - and especially if we’d done it with a late goal - would have smacked of title-winning magic.

As it stands we’re left knowing that that magic will now have to come at parkhead. I don’t fancy seeing The Gers playing with ten men at home to Motherwell or away to Hibs in our next two game, simply so we can engineer circumstances in which the victory will mean so much more than the three points the SPL automatically award you for scoring more goals than your opponent. All we’re left to contemplate now is that Lee McCulloch got himself sent off, fell naively into the trap the talentless Aberdeen sides of the last 15 years have repeatedly and predictably laid for us at Pittodrie. That is their right - and it’s our fault that we STILL HAVEN’T LEARNED from all those previous visits. When the sheep want to turn it into a battle we find we still lack players with the competence to go in over the ball in a subtle manner. We still lack a vicious cunt of a midfielder, a cold-blooded hard man who can promise physical retribution of the sickening kind to his opponent, but also promise a full ninety minutes to his team-mates and manager.

Don’t get me wrong, we have players who can win a stand up fight. We have players who can keep their cool in a battle. But we don’t have players who can completely end the opposition’s desire for a physical fight without being noticed. Alan Hutton should never have been in a stiuation where his tussle with Chris Clark could be allowed to cost us one of our players. Having chosen to put the little wanker into the Paddock end, either Hutts should have hit him in a way which ensured Clark was never going to get up again (wel, not for the rest of today’s game anyway), or Al’s his team-mates should have been ready to keep the heid and play it fly when Clark’s inevitable retribution followed.

(I’m referring to CHRIS Clark here, by the way - not Kenny. Kenny’s the best ref in the SPL so why woudl I be slagging him??!!…)

Clark, after all, was the one displaying the immaturity at the time of the second outrageous foul of the game. When he took his glaringly obvious yellow card revenge on Al, we should have been lapping it up. Not only were we one goal ahead but Aberdeen were losing the plot rather than us. Okay, we don’t like to see Severin and co in the faces of Rangers players and we’re glad the men in blue want to look out for each other but, really, they should be doing it in a more street-wise manner. Even if yer gonnae get sent of - ensure yer opponet is taken out of the game as a consequence. MAKE IT WORTH YOUR WHILE!

I couldn’t believe it was Lee. From where I was stood, right down the front, almost dead on the half-way line, I could make out nothing of the incident other than Kevin Thompson clearly panicking about the consultation between Kenmny Clark and his linesman. Kevin knew that the linesman knew and I knew that if he knew, then Clark would soon know and - bingo! - one more shite piece of red is flaunted in the air of this shitehole city where the only pleasing aspect about Pittodrie’s relentless rouge complection is that it at least provides ONE SINGLE break in the unmitigating masonry malaise known as granite. MAN, I fucking hate that town. It should be nice. But it’s a shithole. Having been there when Simpson assaulted Durrant and when Nando did his Kung Fu on one of the Youngs, that red card being shown to Lee today was almost expected. It was just another case of Rangers failing to protect themselves at Pittodrie. Durrant was out for years, Young was out for - what? - a minute?. And word soon spread from mobile phonecalls that even Lee McCulloch had fallen victim to the NEVER-QUITE-GETTING-IT-RIGHT physical response of Rangers at Pittodrie.

Once again we’d given them what they wanted, and oh-so-cheaply. It’s very unlike Lee. He nailed Severin at Ibrox when we did them in the first encounter of the season and I remember he did it beautifully. He knows the ex-jambo with the coat-hanger shoulders is the fulcrum of all Grampian pretence at being a decent club. Lee obviously had his eye on Aberdeen’s general again today. But he got it wrong. Hitting the cunt is fine. But being so bad and obvious at executing the task is dissapointing. But the big man is forgiven - especially as he set up the goal which at least gave us a point.

At that point I really did think my pre-match prediction was coming fullsomely true. I thought, as Charlie Adam walked Lee’s great wing-work into the back of their net on 30 minutes, that we were indeed gonnae destroy this mob today. I thought we’d annihilate them but, of course, I made the mistake of admitting this. Out loud. Pre-match optimisim is, on my part, only ever rewarded with disaster. I made these Saturday convictions known to only my nearest and dearest so as to limit the possibility of badkarma. But nah - even just telling the next door neighbour’s cat on my way to the shops this morning (”We’ll pump these cunts today - blow them away - now get he fuck off my wall ya skanky feline fucker”) was pushing it too far with the fates.

That we didn’t get to half-time before Abderdeen had scrambled in an equaliser was about as surprising as the fact it was cold and windy inside the North Sea’s only football stadium. It was always coming. Even though we by and large had the ball and made the attempts on goal, there’s one little ingredient to title-winning stories which is more relevant to me at his time of year than all this Jesus, Mary and Tony Blair pish: TIMING!

Ye can have the players, ye can have the drive and the ambition. Ye can even have the money. But nothing helps a team win the title like TIMING - timing their results. Like doing what has to be done, WHEN it has to be done. Yeah, yeah, yeah - of course - it’s all about TOTAL POINTS GAINED. But in the marathon that is an SPL season, so many points are gained from confidence, from conviction and from a sense of purposeful momentum. Sometimes you win only because you know your main title rival is closing in on you. Sometimes you lose only because you choke at the prospect of finally being able to overhaul that main tabular opponent. One such scenario is the mark of eventual title winners - the other is the mark of Tommy Burns’ Celtic. When Lee went off today I was instantly convinced this wouldn’t be a happy day - the silencing of the lambs was a no-go anymore - so I couldn’t see us getting in at the break still in the lead. With Aberdeen having blown their stamina gasket on Thurday night against Copenhagen, we’d probably still have been able to take them with ten men if we’d made it into the dressing room 1-0 up. That’s why we didn’t. Because it wasn’t gonnae be one of those days.

As the second half progressed, however, and we pounded their goal with no effect, I gradually felt that one goal would definitely win the game for us. More than that, with Kenny Clark seemingly incapable of blowing for a foul from behind or of administering a yellow for persistant fouling - a perceived, if totally mistaken, sense of injustice was breeding amongst Rangers players and fans today. This imagined siege factor would make a win seem like an “against all odds” victory. That would be horrendously incorrect from an objective POV, of course - we’ve much better players, Aberdeen were knackeredf and while Kenny Clark is nowhere near as good as the radio commentators on BBC Scotland were telling me as I sat defrosting in my car on Union Street, he was bound to have been a hell of a lot better than he seemd to my rabidly biased eyes during the 90 minutes I watched from a terrible vantage point. We had more than enough at our disposal to win this game.

Referees are almost never to blame. Even if they are having a howler, the best teams can play around it or use it as inspiration - all sure in the knowledge we’ll get the rub of the shite-stuff the following week,.

However, that fact that it strictly-speaking would NOT have been “against all odds” to have won here today makes no difference. It could have been spun to feel like that. Like the brilliant array of balloons we all received at the big iron gate on Golf Road today (well done to the Bears who organised that - I have enough wind to do far more than three by the way!), a huge sweep of sentimental loyalty would have poured down from the South Stand onto the Rangers players. It would be one of those raw indelible days, teh effect of which lasts for months. It would have sealed us as title favourites. TIMING. Celtic drop points at home on Saturday and we go joint top with two games in hand on the Sunday. That would have been the impeccable timing of champs.

But it didn’t happen. We weren’t clever enough. We weren’t good enough. The gauntlet was thrown down - or stupidly dropped by Celtic yesterday. We picked it up for a few moments today, only to drop it back onto the pavement. We can even go and beat Motherwell and Hibs now but still the crucial moment of TIMING has been lost until the 2nd of January.

We must pick up six points from our next two, very difficult games. Not just because that’s what you must do to win leagues, but because Xmas-New Year is when Leagues are lost rather than won. Remember the home draw with St Mirren last year?! We have to be hitting a peak of guts at this time, if not a peak of performance. THIS TIME OF YEAR - THIS TIME OF ANY SEASON - YOU MUST GIVE YERSELF SOME AMMO AS YE HEAD INTO THE HOME STRAIGHT. TIMING, TIMING, TIMING!

That Motherwell lost yesterday is more terrible timing for us - I’d have much preferred them to come to Ibrox getting above themselves, setting new club records and thinking they can take us on. As is, they’ll be grounded and have something to prove.

That Hibs may well have a new gaffer in place by next weekend is also terrible TIMING for us - new man in always gets a good performance in his first game - we’re ideal opponents to further extract that great performance from otherwise medicore players.

And who knows which of our current squad might leave in the transfer window?! We could be weakened by the time 2008 is up and running. But if we want to win the SPL and if we maximise the talent we have at our disposal then we can take all six points in the next six days. I don’t care how we do it … as long as we have no more supensions!

But the Piggery on 2nd January, exactly one year after PLG’s last game in charge, is the second-, minute- and hour-hand of timing. Points on the board always beat games in hand. Reigning champions always take more confidence from smaller results. Remember too that Hibs BEAT us at home this season. The fact that we only picked up a point is all that matters today - the whole “ten men” thing was our own fault. This result at Pittodrie, where Celtic won 3-1 earlier in the campaign, was a bit of a fuck-up.

That Celtic can drop so many points this last few weeks and still watch us fail to catch them is a huge filip for the hooped hordes. We had to do it TODAY if we wanted to actually run away with the league. But we didn’t do it today and so now we’re back in a dog-fight, particularly so because we have to grind out results in our next two games against opponents who have today seen we’re still there for the taking. We ain’t becoming the unstoppable force of momentum I wanted us to be in order to sweep Strachan off his perch and back to Southampton in one grand move in teh space of four domestic games. So we’ll just have to continue persistently nudging him towards the edge during the festive period and wait for Jan 2nd to see if we can push him all the way off and over into the abyss.

By the look and sound of our support today, by the send-off we gave our team at the end of the match, I think we’re all up for that. Players and fans united - The Gers gradually eeking out their rightful place once more.

Have a Merry Christmas, troops. Eat loads of turkey - send me yer left-overs.