TOTAL-ish FOOTBALL (Hibees … 1 GERS … 2)

Now that the final whistle has gone, I’m glad Hibs scored. Now that the three points are safely in the Royal Blue Umbro toggle bag, I’m pleased we made a bit of a fud of ourselves in the last five minutes. Now that there is no other game between now and our trip to the home of the reigining champions and league leaders, I’m glad we took a wee slap across our collective napper before we departed Easter Road. Because, at times today, it would have been very easy for us to have thought we’d achieved footballing perfection.

By “us” I mean some of the players and a LOT of the fans. For spells - particularly a surreal quarter hour from 69 to 84 minutes when Hibs enjoyed approximatley two touches of the ball - we could have kidded ourselves we were easily the best team in Scotland and only behind Man U, Chelsea and Arsenal in terms of the British game. Liverpool? - they’d maybe be eaksy-peaksy with us … but only if Gerrard was fully-fit. To the un-trained eye, Rangers today looked as stolidly invincible and eye-catchingly beautiful as Arthur’s Seat, bathed in a winter sun which now only peaks between the stands at Easter Road, as oppossed to pouring over the old, un-roofed, open away end terrace, but peaks through substantially enough to glare out and catch out the cheapo Setanta cameras as Rangers look like completing a 356-pass move with the goal of the century.

What a spell of play that was! What an erection I had by the time Allan Hutton, overlapping like a Wing-Back god, was bearing down on the Hibs six-yard box with 25 options around the penalty spot. But Al didn’t square it too convincingly. We didn’t go 3-0 up. Thank gawd! Thank Gawd we didn’t finish that move with a goal. For (a) just as Allan passed, the Setanta director was too scared to pan back to follow the ball because the only camera which could show us the goal-mouth was drenched in the aformentioned sunshine - so I’d have missed the climax, the thrilling denouement of this mesmeric move and yet another footballing orgasm would have been denied me, and (b) full, net-bulging, rigging’-bursting consumation of this session of soccer sultriness would have resembled footballing perfection … and we really don’t want to peak, or think we’ve peaked, too soon.

Today would have been one game too soon.

You don’t want to go to Parkhead believing yer own publicity. You don’t want to go into a derby game thinking yer world-beaters. This was, after all, only Hibs away. I say “only” in respect of their current form and managerial machinations.

First thing I’m glad of today is, of course, that we got the points: We began this calendar year some 14/17 points off the top of the league. We end it with a few hours on top of the pile and our next game giving us the chance to make that pile our own to top.

Second thing I’m glad of is that we played so well at what is TRADITIONALLY a very difficult venue.

Third thing I’m pleased about is that the difficult three-game build-up to the DayAfterNe’er’Day Derby is now over and we managed to drop points in only one of them. Aberdeen away, Motherwell at home and Hibs away. We waned to win all three, of course, but with Celtic dropping some silly points this month, drawing with Aberdeen away when ye play two-thirds of the game with ten men isn’t too bad a hit to take. Lee McCulloch should not have got himself sent-off at Shittodrie. Going down to ten men is just as culpable as defending badly or being unable to mount serious attacks - it’s just another type of failure. But we can spin it to ourselves and say we came out this three-game spell rather well. None of it will matter a fuck if we get tanked at parkheid but all ye can do is prepare as best ye can for such games and get as many points on the board as ye can muster (As I type this, Motherwell are 5-1 up on Dundee United after less than an hour: That gives Boxing Day’s Ibrox result a bit more perspective!) and today saw the satisfactory completion of that derby preparation.

Fourth thing I’m glad of is the burgeoning strength of our squad. Cousin was taking a slagging, after the Pittodrie game - he’s now scored in each of the two matches since. By persisting with big Dan, Smith proves to the numpties yet again he knows what he’s doing: Talking of numpties being proved wrong, I didn’t like Chris Burke. Yet Burkey has come back with a deafening bang, lending real pace and purpose to our front-line. Steven Naismith is becoming a Rangers legend right before our eyes: Before Aberdeen last Sunday, Lee McCulloch proved he was one of the top five players in the SPL: Papac can bolster the defence. Whittaker could move into left or right mid. Darche is back, Novo is coming back, Beasley waits in the wings. Brahim Hamdani was at the core of today’s composed build-up play and possession: All in all, we seem to have very passable strength in numbers.

Fifth thing I’m glad about is the way we played today. But this is also where the caveats come in. Today I saw Rangers doing all the things I want of them and a few of the things we’d wish for, but not necessarily with the overall effect we need.

The opening twenty-minutes saw us play my kind of football - but without the goals at the end of it. Big Cousin rumbled them up in the middle of their defence and acted as the fulcrum of the attacking front-line. Daniel was the sun around which Naismith and Burke orbited while they themselves spun on their own axis and left their markers in the shade. Our 12th-minute opener was full of the kind of direct and relentless energy which thrills me to my core, Naisey came in at the back post as Burke fired a deadly ball across the six-yard box. Bodies slid and collided and the ball rattled high into the underside of the roof of the net It was power play, it was blistering, it was coruscating, it was devestating - it was perfection. Goals signal perfection. Build-up play only creates promise and in the harsh world of top-flight football, promises count for nothing.

We continued with the heart-felt promises for much of the first half: Energy and direction and purpose. No more goals. Barry Ferguson was supporting - and so was Thomson: Brahim Hemdani was keeping an eye on things for them while they were away. Our captain was suddenly beating two men in the box and trying to round the keeper. Hibs could hardly get out of their own box, never mind their own half. But we COULDN’T SCORE A SECOND GOAL. It was great, it was thrilling - but it wasn’t perfect.

Second half, we go that second goal. Hibs had brought Beuzelin on at the break and this worried me - he’s a great player. But we just played around him and instead of the intricate one-twos about the box of the first forty five, Big Cousin just thwacked the thing intae the top corner from twenty yards out. From the last day of October til the first day of December, Rangers went 2-0 up in four straight domestic matches. For the next month we went 1-0 up in every SPL game but never made it to 2-0. We were always caught out with a 1-1 equaliser, from a corner. Today, just as I was beginning to worry about this trend, we discovered once again how to go 2-0 ahead. The relief combined with the spectacular nature of the finish to send me onto the living room ceiling.

Ye know it’s good when ye immediately start moaning about not being there. As soon as I reconnected with the floor, I cursed my financial status and damned the world in general because I wasn’t sat at Easter Road, right behind Cousin’s shot. I’d been at the first game of the calendar year, that trauma-filled day at Motherwell where we won 1-0. I should have finished off 2007, one of the most “interesting” years in our long, proud history, with a sense of real completion, by being at our last away game of the calendar year. As a substitute, I texted my mate who hasn’t missed any domestic Rangers match for the last two and a half years - he was up in the top tier of the away end. He too felt it was as well as we’d played in the last few months. And, yes, I really was an arsehole for missing this!

And then, in front of the Bears at Easter Road and before all the Bears watching on Setanta, we began the possession play. In teh immediate aftermath of the second goal we began to play like Ajax of the early-mid seventies. Hibs could not get the ball off us and the Setanta microphones, better than their cameras, picked up the continuous dull thud of Rangers leather on SPL football - an endless, relentless sound, almost metronomic in its regularity: “Pass”, “Pass”, “Pass”, “Cross”, “thud”, “thud”, “slap”, “slap”, “Pass”, “thud” - the ball went from wing to wing, box to box, Rangers player to Rangers player and, at one point, I thought it was so beautiful and so relaxing a sight and sound that it might actually send me to sleep.

And that’s the problem.

So much possession, without an end product, can lead to a kind of soccer somnambulance. It was great to watch and it was a demonstration to the Gers players that we really are a team with a huge well of talent. It was hopefully a confidence-booster, a staging-post at which we could stop and look back on the improvement we’ve made over the last 12 months. As the ball went from every Rangers player to every Rangers player, all via Brahim Hemdani, and the Hibs players chased shadows, we could clearly see we’d come out of that nightmare in which we found ourselves in the first week of 2007. In the last days of the same year, we were playing pass-the-parcel with an SPL football during an SPL away win. Our fans chanted “Easy, Easy!” and our players knew one level of the Rangers comeback had been conquered. But this spell of mesmeric possession might also, had it been allowed to continue, have given an appearance of dominance which was misleading. All our blistering attacks reaped only one goal. All our easy possession came after we’d scored a second goal. There was no third Rangers goal. This possession play was actually dangerous to us.

So, I’m glad it was punished.

And, because of those caveats, because of my reservations about how we might have THOUGHT we’d played, today’s experience only became totally pleasing to me when the final ingridients were added: The Sixth and Seventh gladdening factors may be the least spectacular but, for me, the most vital: (6) Hibs scored and (7) Walter Smith expressed slight displeasure at our marathon spell of possession play:

Zemmama’s 88th-minute strike may have been Hibernian’s only real effort on goal but it left them needing only one more to wreck our nascent title challenge. All our passing of the previous 15 minutes suddenly seemed pointless, wasteful, stupid. Why the hell hadn’t we just banged in a few more goals??!! Suddenly, with the result temporarily under threat, the kudos of defeating Hibs at Easter Road was hurled into starker relief: The Hibees may have only lost once previously at Easter Road this season but they’ve been utterly shite for most of the last two months. And if yer 2-0 up and cruising with two minutes left yet manage to chuck away two points, what does that say about you, about Rangers??!! There’s nothing like a bit of raw panic among the ranks to give everything a bit of honest perspective: We’re still learning and while accurate, clever passing is vital to any title-winning team, knowing when to do it and how to get an end result from it is of far more import. As someone once said on this blog - winning titles isn’t just about playing well, it’s about TIMING.

That timing comes over the course of a season - getting crucial results at crucial times. But it also comes during the course of individual games. These games are, of course, your season in microcosm. Walter, in his post-match interview on Radio Scotland, was clearly aware we’d played ourselves to sleep instead of playing Hibs to sleep and hitting them with a third and fourth goal. Walter knows that we had to win at Easter Road because Celtic lost there and because Celtic drew with Hibs at home while we lost to Hibs at home. Walter knows That BOTH halves of the old firm have been dropping “silly” points all season and that the only result which will break one of us out of this parallel carelessness is if one of us can win BOTH of the Old Firm derbies so far this season: On Wednesday that can only be us.

Walter knows that focussing on the fact Celtic didn’t take a single point from us or score a single goal against us in 2007 would be just as slack and stupid as focussing on the fact Hibs haven’t had a touch of the ball for the last 88 minutes and we’re 2-0 up: Just at the end of the run, just when ye think yer getting comfy - BANG! - that’s when ye get smacked in the teeth. We therefore need to stay very, very sober about today’s game. Zemamma’s goal was a healthy bucket of water to the Rangers coupon.

We have two central defenders who will not be beaten but who can’t distribute the ball. We have two full-backs who can’t defend anywhere near as well as they support the midfield. Up-front we have a dazzling array of potential, a very attractive set of options, but nothing which has yet proved truly conclusive. What we have is a solid wall of a midfield. Our team’s midriff is a veritable washboard six-pack: Ripped, tanned, oiled-up - and it times it has to comepnsate for an oridnary-looking face and a decidedly unshapely arse and pins.

Our full-backs will always advance to augment the midfield - they are most comfortable assisting the attacks and defending high up the park. Today Naismith and Burke were also able to switch from strikers back to centrocampista. For all our possession, Alan McGregor still kicks the ball from hand - he doesn’t roll it out to his defenders. We get it into the middle of the park and there we can move it about between Ferguson, Thomson and Hemdani with one of the spare two protecting the man on the ball and the other offering him a short-pass attacking option. If Brahim’s not playing, it’s McCulloch. There is our strength, there is our heartbeat - midfield is where Rangers can do well enough to start launching effective attacks or badly enough to expose our defence.

We have shortcomings and weaknesses but we have a manager who knows how to overcome them. First thing you do is get the collective mind-set right.

Don’t ever think that exhibitionism at the expense of a weaker opponent in a weakened state proves anything. To beat them is the only vital factor. To ensure we’re still grounded and hungry when on the same pitch as our biggest, most powerful opponent, we need something in reserve. We need something left to prove. We need to be peaking - but not at our peak. I’m glad we took a wee slap today, because wee slaps in the short-term prevent boots tae the nads long-term. On Wednesday I want Rangers to be the ones administering the slaps, the kicks, the punches, the cold showers to everyone at Celtic FC.

Today might have looked like we were close to perfection. But that’s not what we want. We don’t want the appearance of perfection. We don’t want to impersonate it. We want the real thing - and that can only happen when we’re up against opponents worthy of the title “champions”. Next Year - Wednesday 2nd of January next year - is the perfect time to deliver the polished article. Will we beat Celtic? We can but wait and see. All I know now is that the preparation, at least, has been perfect.