THERE WILL BE BLOOD!

Can you hear it, troops? Can you? No? Ahhh, but you must. Please, join me in a hushed moment of Ibrox zen. Let tantric Beardom release your senses from petty material distraction. Sit still for a second. Still. Gently take yer right hand aff the mouse and release anything you may be holding in yer left - an HB pencil, a 1:32 scale Luke Skywalker figurine or a freshly-washed jam jar for example. Relax in your chair, dim the lights, tune out the humm of your hard drive and let your mind’s eye lip-read for yer inner ear. Feel it, folks - FEEEEL it. Sense it. Understaaaaand it. For into your spiritual realm it now enters …

Grind, grind, grrrrrind.

Rrrrub, rub, ruuuuub.

Dark decibels …

…gutteral gurgling …

brooding bristling brouhaha and menacing movements in the bowels of the deep-delved earth. Oh, you hear it now alright, dontcha, folks! You FEEL it now!! Ominous, portentous, slightly scary and pant-wetty - what IS that disturbing preternatural yawl?! Does Fat Eck have indigestion? No. Is the dog trying to get its leg over the kitchen bin again? No! Has John Hartson just fallen down a flight of stairs at the Aberystwyth MacDonalds?? No, No, NO, I tell you!

I’ll tell ye what that intense humming of evil is - It’s the RANGERS FIXTURE LIST!!

Ahhh, yes - yes indeed. The tectonic plates of continental and domestic competitions threaten to grind and clash somewhere between the Firth of Forth and the Baltic. A veritable tsunami of trophy-attempts is combining with an earthquake of European double-leggers, Caledonian Cup replays and finals and a … and a … an, erm … (Can anyone think of any natural catastrophe which begins with an “L”?) - a, erm, a LAVA LAKE (nice!) of league games, postponed, re-arranged and backed-up, and all this burgeoning bedlam threatens to create a major fissure in our bid to win the Quadrouple for the first time since we last won the League, League Cup, Scottish Cup and Glasgow Cup (way-hay!).

Werder Bremen have just given eine grosse “NEIN” to our request that the UEFA Cup game in Germany should be moved from the Thursday to the Wednesday. This denies us a wee extra day’s recovery before that Sunday’s League Cup final gegen Dundee Moenchen United. It’ll be a hard shift in Bremen, whatever the result. Should we lose, however, and forfeit the auxiliary energy supplies oft produced by European victory, we enter a CIS Cup final against a lean, mean, thoroughly-rested Tannadice outfit, less than three days after we arrive on the Glasgow Airport tramac like a big blue punctured tyre.

Craig Levein is the very man to expose such low spirits among our leg-weary warriors. The Tangerine terrors have their own unique, if unwanted, motivational tool for this game. They’re trying to win it for their dying chairman. Such enmotions do strange thinsg to teams - especially when they have a stuttering goliath opposite. Before ye know it, we’re out of two competitions in three days. If Hibs abuse our hospitality again at Ibrox, especially as their Scottish Cup visit comes in the wake of the first leg against Werder, we could be down to one pot to pissin’ win by the middle of next month. If we crash out of three competitions with such disturbing alacrity, there MUST be a reaction in our SPL form - one can only HOPE it would be positive.

In short, some punters and pundits think we’re staring a natural disaster in the face. Davie Weir and Carlos Cuellar have already played 358 games each this season and Alan McGregor’s 241 straight shut-outs has openly invited more pressure on Walter’s personell resources - as well as all our wallets. See when ye sign up for all European and Cup games on yer season ticket renewal form ye don’t REALLY think we’ll still be paying for home games in each comeptition come MARCH, dae ye!!! (yeah - okay - me too) If we beat Werder Bremen I’ll have tae take another cleaning job - if we beat Hibs I’ll huv tae sell my body to afford a ticket for the Partick Thistle gemme. Hope there’s a Season-ticket holders discount that night … for the match tickets, that is - it’s been a while since my body merited anything but passing trade.

But I’ll get the money alright. And I bet Walter will get the tactics and the team selection all right. I’ll find the Benjamins somehow because it’s all about the green this next few weeks. The green of my dough, the green of Hibs and Werder Bremen and the ever-chasing green of the Smelly Tick trying to hunt us down in the SPL table. It’ll be tough - but no-one ever learned from easy days. There will be blood, there will be sweat, tears and cards of both yellow and red - but that which doesn’t kill us makes us KEEP GOING FOR LONGER! We take them all one game at a time. Like a big blue cliche machine, we’ll just take each emerald foe as they come, letting the import of the matches inspire rather than tire. And Hampden is only a “neutral” venue for Rangers if we’re playing Celtic so the very genes of this club can beat Dundee United in Mount Florida - no matter how psyched the Taysiders are, erm, up. Overcome this damnably exciting spate of fixtures and our team will be heroes, our punters will be bankrupt and Beardom will be beside itself at having pulled an historic season out of the dying embers of the sabotaged Paul Le Guen project.

If we don’t win two or three trophies this season it’s not because of the fixture pile-up - Doubles, Trebles and so on can only be achieved WITH a fixture pile-up - it’ll be because we just ain’t good enough. As long as you’re winning the big games, you’ll keep winning the next big game. Time after time we see clubs winning the Champions League while winning their own domestic title. Time after time people tell us that Celtic’s failure to win the SPL in 2003 was down to their UEFA Cup run - and time and again I tell them that they only lost that title by two goals and, had they won in Seville, they’d have found the energy and belief to get those two goals at Rugby Park four days later: Everyone forgets that, after their semi-final win against Boavista on a hot Portugese Thursday evening, that same Celtic side came to Ibrox on the Sunday and turned us over like thoroughly rested kids having their candy taken off them by sharper, more street-wise bullies. It’s not PLAYING in lots of competitions which costs you trophies, it’s LOSING in lots of competitions.

Always seemed self-evident to me!

Anyway, I was glad Hearts won last Saturday. They’re a thoroughly crap rendering of an impressive squad of parts, are the Jambos. They have enough in their locker to turn over a top side but they’re psychologically weak enough to be afraid of becoming a top team themselves. Having defeated Motherwell at Fir Park at the weekend, a win against us this mid-week would make Hearts “a threat” once more. That’s too much for them to shoulder. But after the tanking they gave us at Tynecastle last time we were in Gorgie, we need to be sharp as Daniel Cousin’s hair-do to take all three points.

And we need all three. Because this heavy fixture list is best diluted by victories - its threatening potential for havoc and mayhem can only be dampened by winning … or score-draws in Germany after a 0-0 at Ibrox!